From the City of Lakes to the City of Stage Lights
Two Eustis ballet students prepare for training with Alvin Ailey
Written by Blair Townley; Photos Provided
They waited patiently to find out their fate.
They watched as many go into a room only to come out saying they didn’t make the cut.
In the last second, they discovered they had landed the audition to train in one of the most well-known dance companies in the nation.
They are 16-year-old Laura Smithson and 18-year-old Christopher Miller, two students from Studio 19 Centre for the Performing Arts in Eustis who recently were accepted into the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
“It was really awesome. It took me a minute to sink in that we both got accepted into one of the largest dance companies in the world. We’re down here in little old Eustis and they only took 300 people in the nation,” Chris recalls.
Laura and Chris will be taking part in training programs at the New York-based company this summer, attending with the goal to improve and grow in their knowledge of dance.
“I’ve always dreamed of going to Ailey and of dancing in general,” Laura says. “I’m just looking forward to the experience of going and learning as much as I can.”
Emerging Ballet Talents
The Alvin Ailey auditions, held in St. Petersburg, showed Laura and Chris most what the future would bring for them if dance is their chosen career path.
“The company can tell in one combination whether you have what they want or not,” Laura abruptly says. “Alvin Ailey is a modern company and the auditions were to show they are very strict on their classical training and wanting you to have a strong technical base.”
Staying strong in classical dance was what both Laura and Chris grew up learning and crafting while taking classes at Studio 19.
Owned and operated by Laura’s mother, Maria Errico, the studio focuses on teaching students the styles and techniques of classical-modern and classical-ballet with all forms of dance, from jazz to tap to musical theater.
What also is strongly encouraged is making the dance come alive to audiences as well as to the students themselves.
“What the students get here [at Studio 19] is beyond just the technique of dance,” Maria says.
“We try to teach them the understanding that it is a total package – it’s the way you present yourself, it’s learning the technique and being comfortable with the choreography. It’s developing that mind, body, spirit.”
Maria was formally trained herself at the Brooklyn College School of Performing Arts and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Modern Dance in New York, and opened Studio 19 in 1998.
For Laura, who has literally grown up in Studio 19, engaging and improving in every facet of dance is what she strives for with each class and practice.
“Ballet is completely me – I judge what I do and no one else can control what I do on stage,” says Laura, who has taken almost every class offered at the studio. She also admits to writing notes after each class to help with individual practices later.
Chris took a slightly different path into ballet, hesitantly joining at age 10 the “girl-oriented” dance form but embracing it more with each year.
“I actually stopped for a year at 13 or 14 years old because I was at that awkward age when I wanted to like it but everything I heard made me not want to. I came back to it ultimately because I love to be on the stage and performing,” he says.
“All the training is like a regular job where you work and you get your paycheck. I work and my paycheck is getting to perform on stage.”
One of those performances included taking part in the studio’s Spring show, “Star Wars, A Stage Production,” where students performed to the sounds of the sci-fi classic.
“It’s great to see this talent come from our little studio. It’s pretty awesome to watch them and help them actualize this journey with my talented teachers,” Maria says.
Dance and Other Opportunities
Even with their apparent excitement about being accepted to Alvin Ailey, Chris and Laura realize their time at Alvin Ailey will be filled with lots of work, frustration and emotional toil.
This, they believe, is not conveyed to people outside of the dance world.
“A lot of people watch So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars and they get all these ideas that ballet is all glamorous, fun and no work at all,” Laura states.
“It’s not like that – you get in there and you bleed, sweat and cry. It’s not like what you see and what Alvin Ailey is giving us this summer is the gritty of dance and that’s what it is all about.”
What will also be exposed to both is the increase in competition for female and male dancers, not to mention the small window of performance years that dance gives dancers.
Because of that, Laura and Chris also plan to attend college for careers outside of dance.
The experience of audition and being accepted to Alvin Ailey, though, has taught the two you should give all dreams a try.
“It just shows that you can’t take what everyone says and give up on something because you think it is going to be hard,” Chris concludes.
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