Faux Pas Were Out at Ballet Audition

The boy, dressed in tights and a T-shirt, took a few uncertain steps across the floor and stopped. Second position was one thing, but the ballet movements he was being asked to do Tuesday were as foreign as algebra to 9-year-old Malcolm Loundway.

“I think I need some practice,” Malcolm said, grabbing a fistful of his own brown hair. And off he went into the corner, hoping to get some pointers from the more advanced dancers in the room.

There were plenty of them. Malcolm was one of 198 children 9 to 13 years old who auditioned at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa on Tuesday for a chance to perform with a famous dance company: the New York City Ballet, scheduled to appear at the Center next Wednesday through Oct. 19.

The Center had sent word to local dance academies that the New York company would select four girls for George Balanchine’s ballet “Mozartiana” and six girls and three boys for “Songs of the Auvergne,” choreographed by Peter Martins, ballet master-in-chief of the New York City company.

“I’ll just go crazy if I get in,” said Jenny Cates, standing outside the performers’ entrance to the Center, waiting for the auditions to begin. Jenny, a seventh-grader at Yorba Junior High School who eventually was eliminated in the competition, dances three hours a day four or five days a week and has performed with local ballet companies, but never any as famous as this one.

Her mother, Donna Cates, said she was “a nervous wreck.”

Once inside, the dancers were asked to perform a simple combination of movements for Garielle Whittle, children’s ballet mistress for the New York City company.

“ Assemble and wait, assemble and wait, echappe, changement, changement, changement ,” Whittle said as she demonstrated the steps to 25 students at a time in one of the Center’s rehearsal rooms. The young dancers imitated as best they could. Some were baffled, but most had no problems with the exercise. All of them looked nervous.

Have to Be Small

“The kids have to be pretty special, especially for ‘Mozartiana,’ which is more demanding,” Whittle said before the auditions began. “But they also have to be small. If they’re too big, they look like miniature company dancers instead of kids.”

As Whittle cut the group in half and then in half again, she told the unlucky ones that some “were just too tall” and others simply were not strong enough yet to perform.

And as the group got smaller, an inch or two the wrong way was the difference between being asked back for rehearsals and a long ride home with mom and dad.

“I think I was too tall,” said Lynn Rielly, 10, of Orange. Lynn was the last girl excluded from the group of dancers being considered for “Songs of the Auvergne,” and that was only after being asked to stand next to some of the other girls for several very quiet seconds, as Whittle sized them up. Was she disappointed?

“No, not really. Well, yes, I guess I would say that,” she said, forcing a smile through her braces. “I think I would have liked to make it because it would have been a good experience. But I’ll try again.”

Back in the audition room, Malcolm Loundway was exchanging handshakes and high fives with the other boys who had made it. Even with coaching from a couple of budding ballerinas, he had not exactly mastered the combination he was asked to do, but he had been accepted. The ballet sometimes has trouble finding boys, Whittle said.

As far as Malcolm was concerned, he had taken a big step toward achieving one of the two goals he has in life. “I want to be a veterinarian,” the fourth-grader said. “And a ballet dancer on the side.”