2 Chattanooga dancers are enjoying success
TWO CENTER FOR CREATIVE ARTS DANCERS GAIN NATIONAL RECOGNITION
For the past year, Chattanooga dancer Damon Gillespie has been taking part in the development of an original musical comedy, “The Prom.” The new, Broadway-bound musical is directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Casey Nicholaw (“The Book of Mormon,” “Aladdin”). The cast features Tony Award-winner Beth Leavel (“Elf,” “The Drowsy Chaperone”) and Tony nominees Brooks Ashmanskas (“Something Rotten”) and Christopher Sieber (“Matilda,” “La Cage aux Folles”). Gillespie is one of a dozen singers and dancers in the ensemble.
“I auditioned for this show in May 2015 while doing a workshop for another show,” says the 22-year-old Gillespie. “‘The Prom’ had a four-week workshop in New York and then they told us earlier this year they were taking it out of town to Atlanta for a Broadway tryout.”
Now he’s seeing that work come to fruition. “The Prom” opened Sept. 7 in Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, where it is playing through Sept. 25. Should “The Prom” land in a Broadway theater and Gillespie be cast in the New York City production, it will mark his fourth New York musical in the two years since he made his Broadway debut as Button in “Newsies.”
Gillespie is one of two dancers from Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts who recently has received national recognition for their talent.
LaJeromeny Brown, 16, who attended CCA for five years, leaves Saturday to complete his junior and senior years of high school in New York City. LaJeromeny — or LJ as his friends call him — will be training at the prestigious School of American Ballet while he continues his academic study at the Professional Children’s School in New York.
He will join a list of Professional
Children’s School alumni that includes dancer Savion Glover, designer Vera Wang, musicians Marvin Hamlisch and Yo-Yo Ma, and actors Sandra Dee, Joan Blondell, Irene Cara, Macaulay Culkin, Carrie Fisher, Malcolm Jamal-Warner, Leighton Meester and Sarah Michelle Gellar, to name a few.
“Center for Creative Arts has been here 15 years, and he is the first student to go to the School of American Ballet,” says Karen Wilson, CCA dance instructor.
“He’s on a full scholarship at the School of American Ballet and a full academic scholarship at the Professional Children’s School. Each of those scholarships is $21,000,” says Anna Van Cura, founder of Ballet Tennessee, where LJ began dancing in a Dance Alive summer program.
DANCING AT ‘THE PROM’
Since graduating from CCA in 2012, Gillespie has played Button in “Newsies,” was a member of the Sharks in “West Side Story” and was cast in the ensemble of “Aladdin” before being sidelined by a foot injury. Despite his Broadway work, he’s probably most recognizable as part of the boy-band quartet that sings to comedian Amy Schumer in her Emmy-winning viral video “Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup.”
“The Prom” is a rippedfrom-the-headlines story about a high school that cancels its prom after a female student named Emma wants to bring a girl as her date. The plot mirrors the 2010 news story of Mississippi teen Constance McMillen whose school also canceled its prom when she invited her girlfriend.
In real life, McMillen was championed by Ellen DeGeneres while, in the musical, a group of aging Broadway stars take up Emma’s cause as a chance to correct an injustice while perhaps heightening their own public image with some good PR. When their bungled attempts at social activism backfire, the small town erupts in chaos. The resulting moral of the story is to stand up for yourself, encourage and accept differences.
“This show is all high-energy. If you’re not going at 100 percent the entire time, it looks sloppy,” says Gillespie, son of Tonya Gillespie, about the choreography. “‘West Side Story’ was straight ballet, jazz and mambo; ‘Newsies’ was athletic ballet; [in ‘The Prom’] we’re doing a lot of hip-hop moves.”
Watch a preview of “The Prom” in the YouTube video “Tonight Belongs to You,” and you’ll see Gillespie (wearing the backwards, blue ballcap) leap across center stage and, in mid-air, do a 360spin with kick out. The turning jump kick is a martial arts move.
“That’s called a 540 kick,” he says, adding that all his stunts were altered “so I don’t land on the foot I injured in ‘Aladdin.’”
Allan Ledford and Lindsay Fussell, two of Gillespie’s former teachers at CCA, drove to Atlanta to see their student in “The Prom.”
“I thought Damon was featured nicely in the dancing,” says Fussell, who taught Gillespie dance for five years. “The men have more athletic dance and they do some really fancy footwork with knee slides and slips.”
“It’s the real deal,” says Ledford of “The Prom.” “It’s going to be such a big Broadway hit. It’s kind of a ‘Footloose’ story about how the town deals with this issue. The music is phenomenal.”
Playbill calls the musical “Broadway-bound.” Should it make it to New York City, Gillespie says he will have to audition again, and whether he makes it is up to the director. He hopes that having worked with director Nicholaw in
In 35 years of teaching, Ballet Tennessee founder Anna Van Cura says LJ is the only high school student she knows to have gotten a handpicked scholarship to School of American Ballet.
“Aladdin” and now in the Atlanta preview will work in his favor.
“This director is amazing. He creates a family environment in the cast,” Gillespie says. “Brooks Ashmanskas, one of the leads, is one of the most brilliant comedic actors I’ve ever met. The whole cast is just amazing.”
LASTING FIRST IMPRESSION
LaJeromeny Brown says he’s always loved dancing — “I can’t really sit still. I like to move and I dance everywhere, even if it’s in the aisle at Walmart” — but it wasn’t until he was 11 that he got serious about it.
That was the summer he was chosen to participate in one of Ballet Tennessee’s free Dance Alive summer programs. Officials recognized his talent and gave him a scholarship to train at Ballet Tennessee. He also was encouraged to audition for Hamilton County’s performing arts magnet school, Center for Creative Arts.
Now he has again caught the attention of a dance school faculty — this time the prestigious School of American Ballet in New York City. During an audition in Atlanta in February for the ballet school’s summer intensive, the teen was offered a full scholarship on the spot for the five-week program. During that summer training, he earned an offer to join the year-round program, again at full scholarship.
“I was very surprised when he was offered the scholarship on the spot at the audition,” says CCA instructor Wilson. “That normally does not happen. It’s very rare. They probably saw more than 200 students at each audition and a total of about 1,500. For the faculty to decide right there is pretty much unheard of.”
“Normally, they finish all auditions across the United States, then look at which dancers they are going to offer scholarships,” agrees Anna Van Cura.
In 35 years of teaching, Van Cura says LJ is the only high school student she knows to have gotten a handpicked scholarship to School of American Ballet.
Van Cura says LJ’s strengths are his physique and his artistic nature.
“He has a beautiful physique for ballet. He is also gifted in being able to absorb ballet technique into his body very quickly,” she says. “The length of his neck, shoulder-to-hip proportion, the length of his legs are all factors. Add to those natural gifts his passion and determination.
“His artistic nature is a quality that can be separate from physique. A lot of people have one or the other; he has both.”
She also points out that LJ is academically strong — he leaves CCA with a 4.0 grade-point average.
LJ says his goal is to become a member of the company of the New York City Ballet “and the only way you can get in that company is to go to the School of American Ballet.”
“Because the New York City Ballet is also in the same building where we dance, I’m excited to see all the professional dancers and to see them in action,” he says.
Wilson says LJ “moves with passion and he’s one of those dancers your eye follows when he’s onstage. The kids who have that passion need to be nurtured.”
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress. com or 423-757-6284.