Not just going through the motions

Alex Coolman

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Let’s take that transition again, please. Ladies:

the first step is a cross step.”

Margie King was working out a tricky moment in a routine for a musical

number. The 51-year-old Tustin resident had just come up with a change to

the moves a few minutes before and was trying to get the dancers to

focus, to get them stepping cleanly through the pattern she had designed.

The only difficulty was that her students were all teenagers and had the

teenage genius for cramming impishness into every moment that wasn’t

perfectly structured. Given 10 seconds between dances, they managed to

crack private jokes with each other, make fun of the steps they were

doing, and slouch like balloons losing helium.

But King wasn’t giving her charges much slack.

“Listen, please. Listen,” she told them. And, to a degree that most

school teachers would probably envy, she got what she asked for. When she

spoke, when she moved, when she played the piano to illustrate a point,

the dancers paid attention.

King, the founding artistic director of The Musical Theater Academy of

Orange County, says the kids who come to her classes should expect to

work hard. She regards the programs that she and a handful of other

choreographers and directors have developed at the academy to be worth

the effort.

“Unless [young people] are really involved in the development and the

appreciation of these art forms,” King said, “they’re going to be dying

arts.”

More than television and movies, King said, the live performing arts need

an understanding audience. And whether the children who come to her

decide to make a career out of art, she feels that they take away from

their experience at the academy a sensitivity to music and theater that

they can’t get elsewhere.

“The schools aren’t doing much,” King said. “Their funds have been cut

back so badly, especially at the younger level.”

The result of these cutbacks, King said, is that a broad spectrum of

school-age children are not exposed with any depth to the performing

arts. While some youngsters with obvious talent are able to participate

in school musicals or plays, kids who show less initial skill sometimes

don’t get the chance to find out what the arts have to offer.

That’s an unfortunate situation, in King’s opinion, because exposure to

performances, even for children who won’t be the next Leonardo DiCaprio

or Kate Winslet, can be a valuable tool in developing young minds and

personalities.

“Kids always want to hide in a group,” King said. But through performance

they can learn some of the basic lessons of the theatrical existence:

that “it’s OK to make mistakes. That’s how we learn.”

Young performers can also come to realize that things that seem

terrifying -- appearing before an audience, for example -- might not

necessarily be so awful after all.

“There’s kids who can sing and dance at home, but they walk into a

[rehearsal] room and they freeze,” King said. “But you find as they get a

little accomplishment that they’re really anxious to do a little more.”

At a recent rehearsal, some of the most confident examples of King’s

students were strutting their stuff. The cabaret group, which is composed

of talented children age 12 to 18, was working on a variety of Broadway

tunes and holiday-oriented material. They ran through “All that Jazz,”

did a quick Christmas number, and segued without delay into the Hanukkah

routine whose steps were causing King so much consternation.

For kids going through the agonies of adolescence, the cabaret performers

were magnificently confident. The material they dealt with -- “All That

Jazz,” in particular -- required a kind of physical assurance and grace

that most adults would find challenging, but the dancers for the most

part seemed unruffled by the roles they had to play.

Vanessa Long, a 15-year-old Newport Harbor High student resident who has

been acting and performing since she was in second grade, had a theory to

explain the confidence of the performers.

“The group here is really close,” she said, “but none of us really have

feelings for each other. ... The hardest thing, but it was only at the

start, was to be confident with all the good people in this group.”

Long, who has already done quite a bit of print modeling, said she hoped

to go on to work in movie or television acting, as do many of the members

of the cabaret group. Chris Downey, a 13-year-old veteran of 10 plays and

a pair of music videos for the band Sugar Ray, says he aspires to be in a

show like “Dawson’s Creek,” and -- again, like many of the group -- has a

physical presence as a performer that suggests the goal is a reasonable

one.

But King is insistent that music and theater should not only be for the

kids with the all-star looks and the pop music voices, and she backs up

her beliefs with her approach toward auditioning.

“We don’t turn kids away,” she says. Instead, she tries to find roles for

children that they will be comfortable with.

King tries to keep costs down for the same reason, charging $85 a month

for her classes for older children and $55 for young kids. Ten percent of

her students attend the school on scholarships that she helps coordinate.

“It made a real impact on my life,” she said of the performing arts. “And

having been involved in it I can see what it can do for kids as well.”

For more information about The Musical Theater Academy of Orange County

classes and productions, call (949) 646-6624.