It was still 12 hours before students would hit the books again at St. Andrews Regional High School, but you wouldn’t have guessed it by the cacophony emanating from its gymnasium.
The action inside on a Sunday night wasn’t just frenetic. It was like a scene out of a movie.
This wasn’t surprising, because the 250 performers who danced up a storm for director-choreographer Paul Becker were strutting their stuff in the hope they might soon be seen in one.
“It’s just been crazy all day,” said Kim Breiland, the Stages Dance Studio founder who helped organize Sunday’s event that culminated in an open casting call for some of Becker’s upcoming projects.
The Stages alumnus, whose last local gig was co-choreographer with Kenny Ortega for Disney’s Descendants when it filmed here in 2014, took time out of his hectic schedule to “give back” to the city that supported him. He held a master class, followed by a question-and-answer session and then the auditions.
During his intense master class he put a sea of dancers through several “street jazz with hip-hop flair” routines, first without music and then to the heavily amplified sounds of Jay Sean’s Make My Love Go.
Dozens of hopefuls, including petite young ballerinas, sultry-looking 20-somethings, strutting hip-hop dudes and Canadian College of Performing Arts students, repeatedly unleashed all the right moves on cue.
“OK, 5, 6, 7, 8,” boomed Becker, leading from the front, his choreographic prowess clearly evident.
“Boom — out! Roll — in!” he said, demonstrating jaw-dropping dance moves that, remarkably, the throng of dancers behind him mimicked time and again.
For nearly an hour, they twirled, leapt, gyrated, shook their heads and even pulled off some floor drops en masse before the auditions began.
As time passed and they were split into smaller groups, the tempo appeared to accelerate, yet the dancers retained their laser intensity, all eyes and ears on the choreographer.
Earlier in the afternoon, Becker and Mark Samuels, a featured dancer in Descendants, taught aspiring screen dancers the choreography to the movie’s hits Rotten to the Core and Set It Off.
Becker, whose current gigs include working with Neil Patrick Harris on the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events, intermittently offered words of encouragement during his master class.
“If you make a mistake, never apologize for it,” he said. “Mistakes are what beauty comes from.”
When it was time for a breather, Becker explained that he pulled some dancers aside “because they were amazing” or just to see them do his choreography without being lost in the crowd.
“It also gives them a chance to be on the spot and see how they handle the pressure,” said Becker, who during the class was assisted by Samuels, Vancouver-based dancer Navid Charkhi, who was also featured in Rotten to the Core in Descendants, and Craig Hempsted, the globe-trotting dancer and CCPA faculty member who has toured in productions including Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby.
They shared comments and filmed the action from multiple angles, including with a tablet outfitted with a fish-eye lens.
“It’s a muscle like anything else. You just have to do it,” said Hempsted when an onlooker marvelled at how these dancers could remember and replicate Becker’s moves so well.
Scanning the rows of dancers, he described Stages Performing Arts School dancer Candace Bruce, 17, as having a “computer-like” brain in this regard.
“Once the music comes on, it’s not hard to keep up,” said Bruce, who does ballet, jazz dance, acrobatics and tap, and began training at age four.
“The local dance community is very amped-up and we’re supportive of everybody because we want everybody to succeed,” she said, explaining the cheers and applause that punctuated routines as the night progressed.
Another eye-catching whippersnapper was diminutive Vibestreet dancer Keira Shea, 8, whose giggles and enthusiasm were a show in itself.
“I express my feelings through dance,” said Shea with a laugh.
Breiland said Sunday’s open-call was special because it’s a “hometown” event that also attracted dancers from the Lower Mainland.
“What I’ve always admired about Paul is that he’s so humble, and he never forgets where he has come from,” she said. “To have him come here now is huge because he has so many pokers in the fire.”
Becker, who said he would decide later which dancers to use for his upcoming projects, emphasized the importance of “being prepared” and persistence in an industry he described as “a crapshoot,” and to take what might seem like rejection as an opportunity to succeed at something else.
“Dance for yourself. You are your own person, your own artist,” he said. “Don’t give up. Never give up.”