Donal O’Donoghue meets the award-winning choreographer
Kenny High School Musical Ortega is the king of the teen musical but a trumped-up drugs charge could have ended his career before it began. Donal O’Donoghue talks to the man behind Julie and the Phantoms
Lemme show you this,” says Kenny Ortega, as he swings around in his seat in his award lled o ce in California. e man who created High School Musical, Descendants and now Julie and the Phantoms, had been talking Hollywood icon Gene Kelly, with whom he worked on the 1980 musical, Xanadu, when words, for once, fail him. So he does his swing and comes back with a gi that famous dancer gave him: a signed director’s lens. “Gene put this around my neck and it has his name inscribed on it,” he says, beaming. “He taught me the art of designing choreography for the camera and it changed my life.”
Ortega (70) has lived many lives: from acting (touring productions of Oliver! and Hair) to choreography (Cher, Gene Kelly, the Twist and Shout sequence from Ferris Bueller’s Day O ) and directing. “Ask me what you want,” he says just a er he proclaims how much he loved Normal People and what he’d give to be in Ireland right now. Instead he’s at home in California, surrounded by the paraphernalia of a life in show business. Last year he was given his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And if you’re thinking those are ten a penny these days, well Ortega has a story to match the glitter.
In the past Ortega has always threaded something of who he is into his work, whether that is the ‘drag queen’ witches in Hocus Pocus or the anxiety of coming out ( High School Musical). So it goes with Julie and the Phantoms. “First of all, our leading lady, Madison Reyes, is Latino,” he says. “She is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents and my family are originally immigrants from Spain so I’ve always wanted to helm a musical project with a Latin leading person. e diversity that is in this story represents the diversity in my life as well as my love of music and theatre and rock and roll. ere’s so much in there that is me.”
But the pivotal moment in Ortega’s life happened during a touring production of Hair in the 1970s. In South Carolina, Ortega, in the role of free-spirited George Berger, bounced into the audience and kissed the head of a man who just happened to be the chief of police. Later, at the bus station, Ortega was arrested on trumped-up charges of drug tra cking. “I only discovered recently that rather than facing 25 years in prison, I was facing 25 years to life,” he says (fortunately the presiding judge smelled a rat). “So, you bet it changed my life (a rare ash of anger). It opened my eyes and had me looking over my shoulder for a long time.” Ortega’s vernacular is as theatrical as his life. “ is was the future and it was screaming my name,” he says of being hired as a choreographer by groundbreaking ‘70s rock band e Tubes when they spotted him busting some moves (“dancing my ass o ”) in a San Francisco club. He turned down the lead role in Jesus Christ Superstar to become the band’s uno cial eighth member for the following decade, a career move he describes as akin to “running away with the circus”. A er that, doors opened everywhere: working with Cher, Madonna, Kelly, to choreography on Dirty Dancing (those iconic I’ve Had the Time of My Life li s).
Yet Ortega’s greatest talent seems to be discovering and nurturing new talent: the director who discovered Christian Bale ( Newsies), Zac Efron ( High School Musical) and Dove Cameron ( Descendants) is now hoping that Julie and the Phantoms will follow a similar trajectory and has his ngers, and toes, crossed for another season. “We are ready, we are desiring it and the cast couldn’t be more ready for a second season. We are going to take this on the road. We want it to be many things. Albums and tours and great television. We’ve built it. Now everyone just has to show up.” Earlier this summer, when Variety magazine added Ortega to their Power of Pride list, he said that the message he wanted to give to LGBTQ+ youth everywhere was to “continue to carry the torch.” So how does he do that? “By my openness as a gay man and through my work where I try to be as inclusive as possible,” he says. “In Julie and the Phantoms, we have a gay leading character which is really thrilling for me. I also want to remind young people of our history, where we are because of the sacri ces made by others. We live in a world now where there are characters on screen that young people can identify with. ere were none of those characters for me and my generation.” Ortega has yet to write his memoir. I suggest it could be a winner. He seems unsure. But if he were to write it, he has his opening scene. “Hair changed my life, enabled me to come out and to be a more courageous individual,” he says. “In the courtroom during my trial for those trumped up charges, the judge said ‘will George Berger please stand?’ (the police mistakenly charged the actor under his stage name). I went to stand up because George was a big part of me but my attorney pushed me back down in my chair. I looked at him. And that moment was when anything could end or begin. So right there is where I’d start.”
Hair changed my life, it enabled me to come out and to be more courageous