Summer Seasoning : High School Arts Students to Spice Up Their Break With Contests, Practices

While other teens will be basking under the beach sun this summer, 16-year-old Ayisha Sinclair will be sweating under stage lights at an acting competition for a scholarship.

Her classmate Cameron Henderson, 15, will spend some summer days practicing 10 hours straight for two national dance auditions. And Daniel Kendis, a second-chair violinist at their high school, will escape to a music camp in the mountains.

It’s not enough that Sinclair, Henderson and Kendis and other students at the Orange County High School of the Arts commit untold hours during the school year practicing their routines. Summer vacation to most of the 500 students is merely an opportunity to dedicate more hours to hone their talent in preparation for auditions, competitions and performances.

“For these students to be the best in their event, they have to constantly be physically training, working out and practicing their selected strengths,” said arts school executive director Ralph Opacic, who estimates three-quarters of the students will spend much of their summer practicing their art. “If they were to take a summer off, it would affect their performance. Discipline and consistency are so very, very important.”

The performing arts school, based at Los Alamitos High School, is one of a handful of public magnet schools that draws selected students from throughout Southern California. Here, the students enroll in regular academic courses at Los Alamitos High and take extra classes concentrating on their individual talents through the performing arts program.

The students take the extra work in stride.

Henderson, who will be a sophomore at the arts school next year, has been studying tap and jazz dancing since he was 8. Now, dancing takes up a good amount of his vacations.

“Summer is a time to relax from school, but it’s busier in my dance life,” he said.

Henderson said he took up dancing seven years ago when his younger sister Alexis began tap dancing lessons. Since then, dance practices and competitions have consumed most of his life. Last week for instance, he spent more hours training for two upcoming dance competitions than studying for his final exams.

Year-round, Henderson takes private dance lessons four days a week at a La Palma studio. He sometimes travels to Riverside on weekends to train with another instructor. These private lessons don’t let up during the school year, and despite the academic load, he still managed a 4.0 GPA.

The extra dance hours have earned him top awards at various regional and national dance competitions in the last six years--the computer room at his Brea home is cluttered with the shiny trophies to prove it.

“Winning isn’t everything,” he said at his home, where photos of him dancing adorn a wooden piano. “I look forward to watching people dance and making new friends.”

Henderson eventually wants to perform on stage, perhaps on Broadway, and with dance troupes.

“I want to do all that before I can’t dance anymore,” said the energetic teen.

On Tuesday, he will compete in “Showbiz,” a six-day event that attracts about 6,000 amateur dancers. In July, he will perform in “Show Stoppers,” another major national dance trial to be held at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

Both events, considered the largest and most prestigious national dance competitions, annually draw thousands of young dancers ages 4 to 18. Dancers are awarded scholarship money if they place in various categories. Last year, Henderson raked in about $3,000 for the four categories he competed in at Showbiz.

“Cameron is a multitalented dancer,” said David Westerfield, who puts on Showbiz.

Although this will be his fourth year in Showbiz, and he has in previous years placed first in several categories, Henderson admits that anxiety still plagues him.

“Every time someone mentions ‘Showbiz,’ my stomach jumps,” he said smiling, revealing his clear braces. “Every year [the competition] gets harder and bigger.”

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Sinclair, who will be a senior in the fall, coolly talks about entering her first acting competition. Next month, she will head to North Carolina for “ACT-SO,” a national NAACP competition that recognizes African American students in the humanities, arts and sciences.

A slender, long-limbed teen, Sinclair will be among 2,400 finalists at ACT-SO, which stands for the Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Science Olympics. Young talent such as filmmakers John Singleton, who directed “Boyz in the Hood,” and the Hughes brothers, who made “Menace 2 Society,” also have competed in ACT-SO.

Sinclair will compete in the drama category by performing a four-minute monologue by playwright Danitra Vance titled “Clair Voyant,” the name of a bubbly, panhandling gypsy healer. First-place winners in each of the 24 ACT-SO categories will receive an award and a $1,000 scholarship.

Is she nervous?

“I don’t get nervous unless someone around me is,” she said, with a modest grin. “Once I get on stage, I just focus and have fun. I’ll give it my best.”

Math tests are more stressful for Sinclair than performing live, she said. Seated in her family’s Los Alamitos apartment, she talks about how she never had any formal acting instruction before she came to the High School of the Arts.

Born in Brooklyn, Sinclair said her love for performance comes from her father, Arthur Sinclair, a longtime reggae singer. When she moved to Los Alamitos at age 2, she experimented with acting by role-playing for home videos with her three brothers and singing along with movie musicals such as “White Christmas.”

“I was always running around singing songs. And even when I didn’t know the words, I’d make up my own songs,” she said, giggling.

She later auditioned for the performing arts school’s musical theater program, which required a monologue and singing a song. Her raw talent dazzled the admissions committee.

“She’s in her element when acting,” said Stevi Meredith, the school’s assistant director of musical theater and Sinclair’s instructor. “She has grown so much.”

Since getting an acting agent in January, Sinclair has starred in two national television commercials for Burger King and AT&T.; Aside from ACT-SO, she will plans to audition for other acting gigs this summer.

“I’ve always wanted to be a performer,” Sinclair said. “I don’t have to be famous. I could teach drama or work at a small theater.”

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Kendis, on the other hand, said he never imagined he would pursue a musical career.

He reluctantly began playing in the fourth-grade because he was required to take a music class, he recalled. His options were to sing or play an instrument. Neither appealed to him.

“I was stuck with the violin because my mom was renting one,” said Kendis, 16. “I didn’t enjoy the violin because I didn’t take it seriously.”

But two years later, he said, he began playing more seriously and appreciating music more.

“When I really get into a piece of music, I can really feel it and it grabs you,” the Fountain Valley teen said. “It’s a great way, of like, expressing your emotions.”

In August, Kendis will head to the San Jacinto Mountains near Los Angeles for two weeks of music studies at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts.

This summer will be Kendis’ fourth year at the music camp, which costs $1,000 for both weeks. Kendis will finance most of this year’s trip by performing at parties and weddings with a string quartet he formed last year with other performing arts students.

The quartet already has booked three wedding gigs. While practicing for the competition, he also plans to record tapes of the quartet’s performance and distribute them to wedding planners and catering services.

“Daniel commits more time than most students to perfect his craft,” said Chris Russell, his music teacher at the arts school.

Like most teens, Kendis has other interests. He plays pick-up basketball games and loves jazz and alternative rock. But “extremely bombastic and romantic” classical pieces move him, he said.

A level-headed teen, he said he realizes there are more uncertainties than opportunities for a classical musician. But Kendis said he’s determined to pursue a musical career, perhaps playing in a chamber orchestra.

“I can’t see myself doing anything else now,” he said, brushing back his thick brown hair. “Summer is a time for me to commit to playing; I’ve only seriously been playing for five years and am up against people who have been playing twice as long. I have to take advantage of summers in order to catch up with them.”