In limbo over the cha-cha

It didn’t exactly jibe with the Broadway version, but this week’s musical production of “Little Orphan Annie” produced by Patrick Henry Middle School’s drama class was entertaining enough for this critic’s thumbs-up.

“Annie” purists might not approve of the liberties taken by the preteen cast:

There was Daddy Warbucks moon-walking like Michael Jackson; random magic tricks with no link to the plot; tumbling routines by Annie and her orphans; and wicked impressions of Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell in a parody of “American Idol.”

And then there was the musical finale -- the entire cast onstage doing the Cha-Cha Slide.

Memorable not just for its toe-tapping rhythm, but because it did not include bumping and grinding.

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Two months ago “Little Orphan Annie” was on the ropes when tempers flared over rumors that the principal threatened to cancel it because he’d been tipped off that its 12- and 13-year-old cast members would perform dances that included “bumping and grinding.”

“I’ve seen bumping and grinding; I know it happens,” Principal Michael Bennett told me on Friday, after the show had finished its two-day run. “I just wanted to approve the dances.

“My concern was that if you’re inviting the public, putting it on the school marquee, make sure that your dance routines are going to leave a good impression. . . . It has to be tasteful and appropriate to the grade standards.”

But to hear disgruntled drama parents tell it, Bennett is simply a fuddy-duddy who has never liked the drama program. And the dance in question was the Cha-Cha Slide, a popular line dance performed at elementary school birthday parties, wedding receptions and retirement luncheons.

Ultimately, he approved the dance. But he alienated parents by keeping them in limbo for weeks before he made time to attend a rehearsal.

“It’s an insult to us, like we don’t have standards for our children,” said Tina Cano, vice president of the school’s PTA, whose daughter helped lead a student protest to preserve the contested dance numbers.

MTV is off-limits in their house, Cano said. “And I go to [the website] Movie Mom to check out PG-13 films before I let my daughter watch them.”

To them, the Cha-Cha Slide is tantamount to the Hokey-Pokey.

It’s got a little more “booty-shaking, maybe,” said mom Erycka Vasquez, who, like many of the parents I met, is closer in age to her children than to the principal. “Kids see these dances on TV. They pick it up. They’re not freak-dancing or touching. Bumping and grinding? Does he even know what the Cha-Cha Slide is?”

Bennett says he’s seen the Cha-Cha Slide, but has never done it. “I’m not the kind to make a public spectacle of myself,” he said. “At a bar mitzvah or a wedding, maybe, my wife will do it. But I tend to stick to the slow dances.”

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It’s not unusual for school plays to draw administrative challenges. The aim of art, after all, is to challenge the senses and push the envelope. Friction is natural between principals, who are apt to be cautious and protective, and drama teachers, who tend to be . . . well, dramatic.

At Patrick Henry, drama teacher Alan Bennett has become part of the controversy.

The principal sees him as a prima donna who has been nursing hurt feelings since last year, when his students won a $5,000 drama grant from Disney. They were one of only two middle schools nationally to be honored for their performance of “High School Musical.” The principal didn’t congratulate them.

The teacher “assumed that because he won the world would stop; that there would be recognition from the school board and the check from Disney would be presented in a big public display,” the principal said. “The whole school doesn’t stop for one production. . . . We’ve got a lot of things going on here.”

But it wasn’t the teacher’s victory, it was the students’. I can’t believe there wasn’t even a shout-out during morning announcements.

The parents see teacher Bennett as a nurturing force, so beloved among kids that his drama class is crammed with 53 students, and kids hang out at his classroom every day at lunch.

And I see him as one of those passionate, if overly sensitive, teachers whose North Star is his students’ needs.

That’s why “Little Orphan Annie” included magic tricks and tumbling routines and double-dutch jump rope and elaborate dance scenes. “Because whatever their talent,” Alan Bennett told me, “every kid deserves a moment to shine.”

And so do the teachers.

The opening night performance was accompanied by a video splashed on the wall of Patrick Henry of teachers stumbling through the Cha-Cha Slide--with some inadvertent bumping, if no grinding -- narrated by a gold-toothed rapper. “Take two steps back, now cha-cha, y’all.”

Maybe the principal doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, but the teachers looked like they were having a ball.

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sandy.banks@latimes.com