Dancer Brings Broadway Touch to UCSD Students

At the height of his success, San Diego-born dancer Barry Bernal turned his back on Broadway and came home. Since the prodigal’s return, however, local aficionados have seen very little of the former star of “Starlight Express” and “Cats.” Aside from an appearance with Jazz Unlimited last fall, San Diego’s favorite son has kept a low profile.

Consequently, UC San Diego’s recent announcement that Bernal has joined the teaching roster for its dance program this year--albeit on a part-time basis--is cause for celebration among the local dance community.

“We’re really excited about him, because of his experience, but even more so because he is an excellent teacher,” said Margaret Marshall, co-coordinator of UC San Diego’s dance program and vice chairwoman of the physical education department. “We observed him when he taught a master class here, and he was wonderful.

“Barry’s classes just started this month, and they’re already packed, and he’s really igniting the students. Hopefully, he’ll be around next year, but we understand he’s interested in pursuing his profession as well. He’s not ready to be strictly an academic.”

“Part of the reason I left ‘Starlight Express’ and came home,” said Bernal, “is because I wanted to create a stimulus--to show that San Diego has potential as a cultural center. We need to work as a community to nurture programs for young people, and we’re going to see a turnaround. I have about 50 students in my classes, and I see this relationship with the university as a long-term association.”

Bernal has not abandoned performing, however. He will dance in this year’s Aademy Awards show and perform with Jazz Unlimited as well. But, as Marshall noted, the department is willing to work around Bernal’s schedule, because, even as a part-timer, Bernal fills an important void at the La Jolla-based university.

“Right now, we have no other men on the dance faculty, and Barry is such a good role model for the students,” said Marshall. “That helps attract more male dancers too.”

UC San Diego does not offer a degree in dance, which limits its effectiveness as a magnet for attracting quality dancers to San Diego. Nevertheless, Marshall believes Bernal’s presence on the faculty will act as “a shot in the arm for us and for our campus.”

Patricia Rincon, artistic director of Jazz Unlimited and a long-time dance faculty member at UC San Diego, is just as gung-ho about Bernal’s association.

“The students just love working with Barry,” she said. “He’ll be teaching our advanced classes and setting a work on the students for the Spring concert.”

Jazz Unlimited is making plans of its own this Spring, as Rincon noted.

“The La Jolla Museum invited us back to do a concert on April 14-15, and we’ll be getting two new dancers soon. We’re still awaiting confirmation on Joey Pentileon, but Terry Lindley is all signed.

“Stacy Scardino is back with us, after a year’s absence,” she said, “so, even though the company will remain about the same size as last year, it will look a little different.”

Local choreographer Tom Vannucci gets his creative juices going when he designs dances for old musicals. But his main goal is to maintain the integrity of the period, not to show off his own choreographic prowess.

“If we’re not careful, people are going to forget about the dances from the 1870s through the 1920s,” Vannucci said during work on USIU’s production of “Tintypes.” “Rhythm, tap, show tap, ragtime. They need to be preserved.”

Vannucci had the blessings of director Andrew Barnicle when he tackled the project, and between them they beefed up the dancing in the musical revue for USIU’s all-student cast.

“ ‘Tintypes’ is different than other musicals,” Vannucci said. “The director and I worked hand in hand to take the production from the 1870s-1920s. I put in a lot of dance, but the challenge was not to bore people with it. Historically, dance really didn’t change that much during those 40 years.”

Vannucci was determined to be true to the era, without overworking any individual stylistic elements. That involved painstaking research and reproduction for a show that ends its brief run at the Old Town Theater on Jan. 29.

In addition to the old standard tap and rhythm routines that pervade most stagings of “Tintypes,” Vannucci added the one-step, the polka, and a Ziegfeld-style chorus line--all adapted to the confines of the Old Town stage--and to the limitations of his non-dancing cast. To this dedicated dance maker, creating the right moves for a college-based musical is serious business.

“I don’t need to be on stage. I did ‘Hello Dolly’ in 1986,” he said, “but I really feel lucky to be able to choreograph as much as I do. I want to keep the old dance forms alive.”

FOOT NOTES: On Jan. 27-28, New York-based dancer Donald Byrd will share Sushi’s downtown studio with Mio Morales in “Fast Changers,” a multimedia work Byrd describes as a “full evening pas de deux.” . . . California Ballet members Calvin Kitten, Patrick Nollet, Sylvia Poolos and Matthew Bean will appear in the San Diego Opera’s production of “Lucia di Lammermoor” this weekend. . . . Barry Bernal will emcee a movie promotion Tap-A-Thon Saturday at Seaport Village in Embarcadero Park. Strap-on taps will be provided for unequipped hoofers, and the open session will be followed by national competition under way in conjunction with the coming Gregory Hines movie “Tap.”