Gender In Musical Theatre

nansan
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:15:04 +0000

My S had “happy feet” as a youngster and was quite active and so we tried putting him in dance classes (which he initially was not thrilled about attending because there were just 2 other guys at the studio) to allow him to work off some of the energy. I know someone who is on the Board of Directors of a signficant U.S. ballet company and she knew that I had a son that was taking dance lessons. Suddenly, I found myself taking my S to an audition for this company’s “Nutcracker.” The next thing I knew, my H and I were hauling him to ballet classes rather routinely - and he was given a full scholarship for attending the classes. Several years ago he auditioned for various summer intensive ballet programs and ended up attending two very prestigous summer intensive ballet programs sponsored by tippy top U.S. ballet companies. He was awarded scholarships and got to spend the summers in interesting locales. But ballet requires extreme devotion - and my S had other interests, including a winter sport and acting. He changed his focus to acting. Unfortunately, he is not much of a singer and so he did not try out for any MT programs (I wish he could sing after reading the posts on this thread!). He is in a BFA acting program, but I do believe that the reference to his ballet training on his resume was helpful when he auditioned for the BFA programs.