Huntington Beach High School’s Academy for the Performing Arts Puts on One of the Most Impressive Fusion Performances To Date

Tuesday: While the Sweethearts Are Out To Dinner, The Dancers Take The Stage

Valentine’s Day. 5:30 p.m.

Most high school students are out on dates, celebrating the holiday with sickly sweet cards and decadent chocolates. Here, there are no bouquets to be found.

The Huntington Beach High School historic auditorium stands stoically, ornate with arches and detailing that reflects its 1926 architecture. The fact that the 55-degree weather and icy, biting winds whip the hair and jackets of passersby does not phase the robust building. Behind its heavy windowed doors, ballet music can be heard pouring from the sound booth for a stage full of dancers in leotards and tights, their hair slicked back into tight ballet buns.

Inside, the girls of Ballet Ensemble flit about the stage, marking their dance for spacing in flat shoes while Brande Dunn, whom everyone addresses as Madame Dunn, works on the lighting for their classical piece.

“Okay, guys, let’s do this,” she calls out over the loudspeaker, and the dancers walk through their formations.

They are preparing for a concert performance called Fusion, which the Academy for the Performing Arts dance department has been putting on for 24 years. The school has different departments, kind of like Districts in the “Hunger Games,” but way less violent (most of the time) — dance, musical theater, acting, orchestra, costuming, technical theater, dramatic production, and two sections of “Music, Media, Entertainment & Technology,” longhand for MMET: media and popular music. Sometimes, the departments will cross over for mainstage shows, but they’re generally separate from one another.

Within the Dance Department, there are different ensembles, similar to the idea of Factions in the “Divergent” series — Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Modern, and The APA Dance Company, the highest-ranking ensemble that has evolved to be the most eclectic of the groups, geared toward preparing students for careers in the dance industry.

APA makes up about one-third of the student body. Fusion is one of two mainstage shows the dance department puts on each year. Ticket sales are a big part of the department’s budget, and their hard work is broadcast to parents, teachers, students, and patrons alike where they can see what goes on outside of the typical high school culture of football games and school dances.

From the back row of the auditorium, you can hardly hear the girls whisper to one another while they’re directed around the stage. The music is tested, and they run the piece. Technical difficulties ensue.

“Okay, guys, that was super average,” Madame Dunn sighs before dismissing her dancers for the night.

She has been working for APA since 2011, and she began teaching ballet at Southland Ballet Academy at the age of 19, over 30 years ago. She worries tonight because while this is only the first day of a week-long process of technical rehearsals and run-throughs, she takes great pride in her work.

“I mean, I’m a perfectionist,” she tells me. “I want to make sure their hard work in class pays off on the stage.”

Wednesday: The Clock Ticks Down

Tensions are running high. Two runs of Fusion were supposed to happen tonight, but the initial run-through, which was supposed to be done by 7:00 p.m., finished at 8:15 p.m.

It is decided reluctantly that they will only rehearse select pieces once more, and everyone else can go home early. The complicated closing number “Miss Honey” is without a doubt the most problematic piece thus far with intricate curtain tricks and technical details. Jana Taylor’s “Ghost Light” number is also required to stay longer.

Tomorrow is the full official dress rehearsal, and Friday is opening night. With just under 48 hours to perfect this show, the anticipation hangs heavy in the air as the dancers exit the theater.

Thursday: Last Ditch Effort

5:41 p.m. Gaggles of dancers sit in front of the long mirror, applying makeup, buzzing with energy, and snacking on various forms of sustenance before the official dress rehearsal run-through. The warmup starts in 4 minutes.

Ballet Ensemble will take over X – a room with mirrors on three of the four walls, with a new grey Marley floor and depressingly yellow walls, made acceptable by the bewildering amount of natural light let in by the arched windows. Jazz Ensemble will take T-4, a smaller room with the same floor and walls, but without windows and a door in the middle of the only wall that contains a mirror. Tap Ensemble will take over this room after they are done.  Modern Ensemble and APA Dance Company will take the stage together for warmup.

Tomorrow night, the auditorium will be anything but empty, each velvet seat filled by a patron of the arts, a grandmother, a prospective APA student, a nostalgic alumn, but tonight, it’s just me, the dancers, and Marie Hoffman.

A formidable woman with thin eyebrows and frequently plum-colored lips, Marie’s identity is perhaps the most infamously known in the Academy for the Performing Arts. She is most recognizable by her short, dark hair and undeniably scrutinizing eyes that are lined with dark liner and thick lashes that make her crystal, blue eyes pop in a way that wouldn’t be so terrifying if her opinion didn’t carry as much weight as it does. A well-decorated professional, Marie is not only the director of the APA Dance Company but also the director of her own company, Akomi Dance. Her modern choreography for the concert space spans pieces up to 15 minutes long chock-full of cross-overs and lifts as well as partner and floor work. Her instruction is not for the faint of heart, but her brutal honesty is all part of her charm.

“Quickly, quickly, quickly, find the space,” she barks toward the displaced clusters of dancers.

It is time for warmup.

Her voice booms across the auditorium as she vocalizes each step before the dancers who disperse themselves in evenly windowed lines across the stage. Listening intently, some merely watch while others perform the step as the instruction leaves her lips.

“Parallel first, please! Here we go!”

Her warmup song is one she’s been using for years — “Roll Downs” by Fat Coda Studios — and over her personal speaker, rhythmic drum beats begin as the dancers plié.

“Feel the weight of your body! Extend! Reach! Find the stretch!” she commands, breathing deeply. You can clearly identify the passion in her words and recognize that with every instruction she gives, she longs to be participating.

The dancers perform in unison, obeying her words like you might a dictator. Lunging and rolling on the floor in socks and bare feet, many dancers close their eyes and connect themselves to the Marley spread across the stage. Familiarizing themselves with their space, the dancers become one with the floor.

The dancers in the other rooms have very different experiences, but many of them are cross-trained — their ensemble determines where they warm up. In T-4, Jazz Ensemble practices developpés and tendus in a center floor combination. Here, the music is more upbeat, and the dancers’ faces are serious as they concentrate.

“Catch your breath,” Claire Zabaneh says to her dancers before demonstrating the next step.

The dancers from Tap Ensemble warm up by going over steps from the dances they’ll later perform. Christy Hernandez, an accomplished professional dancer in the Orange County tap scene, leads the group, counting aloud and keeping them on time as if she were a human metronome. Encouraging and kind, she merely makes suggestions to her dancers and does not single students out. A woman of endless patience, the people surrounding her never feel as if they are anything less than extraordinary.

Ballet Ensemble participated in a full barre, complete with pliés, rond de jamb, and frappé. Their feet brush the floor delicately with synchronized pats as they dégagé in unison.

In the green room, costume design students pin odds and ends of pieces that need last-minute repairs in between homework assignments and shoveling food down their faces. One girl opens a sushi roll to eat, but when I walk by again almost 20 minutes later, it is still untouched.

Back on the stage, at about 127 beats per minute, the dancers roll in circles with urgency in groups of four. As they wrap up, the buzzing excitement thickens the air.

“And so it begins, right?” Marie calls out, gathering her dancers in a circle for a pep talk.

***

With their extensive dedication and perfect attendance, one might forget this is a high school program, and mistake it for a full-time dance company, where its participants might get paid for this type of thing.

Andrea Taylor, APA’a artistic director, writes that her best guess would be that “25-30 percent [of APA dancers] join companies, get degrees in dance, choreograph, or teach” while “another 25 30 percent pursue related fields like physical therapy, kinesiology, sports trainers,” and so on.

“The rest either pursue jobs in the medical or law field,” she adds, including that some end up not working or getting married instead.

Regardless, APA opens doors for students, whether those doors lead toward careers or just keep high school students creative and active before they graduate. This program provides students with marketable skills and crucial life lessons. Everyone is different, so it’s not an exact science, but in APA, students share at least one commonality.

As the technical theater majors set up and lock the tap boards together for the opening number, singers for a musical number walk out on stage for mic checks.

“So go on blow, Gabriel, blow –”

“You’re good, thank you! Next!” an unknown, seemingly omniscient voice of a techie calls from the balcony.

The heavy, crimson curtain lowers at 6:53 p.m. for the 7:00 p.m. run-through. It is likely the first time in history that APA has been early, let alone on time.

“Am I seeing M&M’s in that hand?” Marie calls to her assistant Destiny from the balcony. Out of eyesight, her voice carries across the auditorium, and the bag crinkles as it’s opened.

As the lights dim, the show is simulated. “We are thrilled and proud to present Fusion 2023!”

The curtain rises.

As always, Tap Ensemble opens the show with a piece choreographed by Leah Silva, the director of Orange County’s most well-renowned tap company, Reverb. The dancers wore blazers and hoop earrings for her light, quick, and breezy piece. They are followed by a thrashy Company performance in earth tones and a precarious Modern Ensemble piece involving a ghost light being dragged around the stage, choreographed by Jana.

Drama suddenly ensued as the light would not stay lit as they set up for the piece. From the audience, it’s unclear what the particular issue is other than the dancers cannot figure out how to keep the light blazing, which is the entire point of the dance.

“Modern Ensemble, go ahead and exit because you know we’re gonna have to redo that,” Marie yells into the darkness.

Offstage, the light flashes on and off as they struggle. The dancers are, no doubt, shaking in anticipation, hoping the piece goes off without a hitch. In the audience, even I hold my breath, knowing that Marie’s wrath is not something a dancer wants to face ever, not to mention before a big concert. When they start again, the focus is clear on each dancer’s face, and they pull it off successfully. The prop makes its way around the stage on wheels as various dancers drag it to the iconic “Euphoria” music by Labyrinth. It’s a wonder that the light doesn’t snag on the tape on the floor. This piece not only stands out for its precarious prop but also for its evident storytelling.

“I had quite a bit of intention behind each section,” Jana tells me in the weeks after Fusion. “I knew that it might be just for me, like, I want to create something that the audience can like feel and maybe put their own interpretation to, but they may not necessarily know exactly what I was saying, and that’s okay.”

Incredibly raw, consisting of three parts, Jana wanted to bring a new take to APA’s Modern Ensemble. Based on the practice in the theater where after all of the lights are off at the end of the night, one ghost light is left at the edge of the stage for safety (and warding off evil spirits), she knew this show would be the perfect place to conduct this piece as APA is always open to new, outlandish ideas.

“I knew I wanted to do like an eerie, kind of lonely piece,” she says. “I was kind of using this piece as therapy because I was going through something at the time, and I was trying to get inside the head of a person who’d hurt me.”

Circling around self-sabotage and isolation, the dancers make Jana’s piece come to life on stage, but it doesn’t come without risks.

“We had done a couple runs, and it was fine. It was dress rehearsal night that [the light] wouldn’t turn on, so then it definitely puts you on edge,” she sighs, laughing a little at the memory. “Just crossing all fingers and toes and hoping, ‘it’s gonna work, it’s gonna work.’”

The next dance is to “Bella’s Lullaby,” the iconic music from “Twilight.” Madame Dunn changed the opening formation 30 minutes prior to the stage, and it made all the difference in the cleanliness of their formations. The contrast of the shadows on stage amplifies the wiry muscles of the ballerinas as they turn in synchronization with one another. The concert is broken up with a musical theater number by APA Dance Company and a hip-hop dance, choreographed by Marissa Skates.

The final number of the show is an 8-minute Beyoncé tribute, choreographed by Trevin Stephenson, complete with high ponytails, technical excellence, and reflective silver jackets. This highly camp piece is reminiscent of a concert performance with backup dancers as they execute traditional jazz dance moves and common drag queen signatures. The golden lights bounce off the tinfoil-esque jackets, and strobing lights add to the concert effect.

Trevin likes to make his dances as complicated as they can possibly be for both the dancers and the tech crew. I can feel him developing an aneurysm in the lighting booth as they restart the dance four times because of difficulties with the curtains.

Friday: Opening Night

6:30 p.m. Half an hour before the show.

Backstage, dancers hustle to collect their costumes, fasten their hair, and touch up their makeup. The dressing rooms radiate the sweet smells of hair spray, sweat, and nerves as the minutes tick closer and closer to the curtain. Dancers pin each other’s costumes and share lipstick, bonding in ways that outsiders can only wish to feel once in their entire lives. You cannot understand the intimacy and deep connections that dance brings for people, especially when it comes to the week of a show. Tech rehearsals draw people together, for better or worse, like a marriage. Relationships formed backstage and in the wings are ones that last a lifetime. I would cover up murders for the people I once danced with in APA. The four years spent together, getting yelled at and ridiculed, yet developing skills and strengths we never thought possible, are invaluable, indispensable, irreplaceable. I would not trade those experiences for the world.

On stage, the audience will be graced to witness the culmination of the dancers’ work since the beginning of the school year. With just three chances to showcase their dedication, the dancers are both excited and completely beside themselves with apprehension about the way that the concert will go.

Saturday: The End

Two shows down, one to go.

As the auditorium fills up to see Fusion 2023 for the last time, I feel pretty confident, as if I’d been the one rehearsing and breaking my back over run-throughs and costume fittings for the past six months. The show goes off nearly without a hitch, and you can see with overwhelming clarity that the dancers are putting their all into this final show.

“It just keeps getting better and better,” Jana says about “Ghost Light” during intermission.

She’s right. You can see the intensity with which the dancers express themselves. They are pouring their hearts out on the stage, like this is their last day on Earth, like nothing more matters to them in the whole world. This is it. This is what they live for.

The applause was showstopping, with many parents and members of the audience performing standing ovations. You might expect that the dancers are deserving of a much-needed break — that they might get cut some slack in the upcoming weeks, but that is not the case. Come Monday, rehearsals will once again be in full swing as the dancers prepare for a second-stage, student-choreographed show, Creative Forces, and their second mainstage show in June, Synergy.

“Have a great weekend!” Madame Dunn shouts into the dressing room. “We start next week — fresh!”

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Written by Lillian Beatrice Dunn for LA Dance Chronicle.

Featured image: 2023 Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts FUSION – Photo by Jim McCormack