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Sell's dance recital a hot ticket

The Broadway-style show with almost 200 dancers will be staged with professional sets and costumes.

You expect to see people lined up around the block at 5 a.m. to get tickets to, say, a Bruce Springsteen concert or the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Hairspray.

But a local dance school recital?

Yes, indeed, if it's Sell's Broadway Dance Center's annual show.

"We stay away from the basic recital," said dance studio co-owner Chris Sell, who for years toured the United States with the Broadway company of Cats and in Canada, Europe and Asia in other shows.

"We have a Broadway-style show," Sell said. "We use props, we have sets, we do big production numbers. We try to make it very elaborate."

Examples? Sell and his wife and studio co-owner Shanna (also a Cats alumna) have rented five large, painted backdrops from a Hollywood company, as well as professional costumes. They've designed and had built showy set pieces, including a grand staircase for the finale of the Beauty and the Beast segment. The lighting and sound are also professionally done.

"Last year, we had people in line at 5 a.m., with a line going for four or five hours on the first sale day," Sell said of his studio's first show.

This year's show, Lights, Camera, Action!, has a Hollywood theme, featuring Broadway shows that have also been movies - Grease, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Oklahoma and 42nd Street - and a hip-hop segment to the hit movie, Men in Black.

Nearly 200 dancers will perform in the two-hour show.

The show itself has 23 scenes, including the seven-scene Wizard of Oz Ballet that features 107 singer-dancers performing to songs such as Somewhere Over the Rainbow, If I Only Had a Brain and Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

"We do everything like a big Broadway production," Sell said. "We have good numbers of kids on the stage, not just 5 or 6."

For Wizard, the Sells had a Kansas-style house built. For another scene, the Sells are using the full-sized facade of a shiny black Rolls-Royce that appeared in the show they directed and choreographed last season at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre, Crazy for You.

Among the performers is Adam Boreland, who recently won a coveted spot - and one of only 75 scholarships nationwide - to the American Ballet Theatre's Summer Intensive Program.

Performing the show for the first time is Megan Kate Sell, the Sells' 2-year-old daughter, who plays Shirley Temple in the opening number, Roll Out the Red Carpet.

"Megan is a real little dancer, a real leader" her proud father says. "She picks (the dance) up just by seeing it."

The featured dancer in Singing in the Rain is Richie Auslander, age 10, of New Port Richey.

"He does the Gene Kelly role, and the girls come out with rain slickers and their umbrellas," Sell said.

"We had one performance last year, and it sold out quickly," Sell said. "Our studio (enrollment) has increased a lot since then, so we could never have just one seating at River Ridge. Already most of the seats in the center sections have sold."

WHAT: Lights, Camera, Action!

WHERE: Center for the Arts at River Ridge, Town Center Road, New Port Richey

WHEN: 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on June 21

TICKETS: $12, reserved seating. Advance purchase recommended; available from 4 to 9 p.m. weekdays at Sell's Broadway Dance Center, 7296 State Road 54 (Seven Springs Plaza, south side of road), New Port Richey.