Watching former Broadway dancer John Leggio create a dance is what it must have been like to watch Salvadore Dali create a painting.
There's no to telling what's going to happen next.
For Dali, it was a drooping watch or an Abraham Lincoln in pixels before pixels were invented.
For Leggio, it might be a slide and jump where a leap and turn are expected.
I've watched the end product of Leggio's work for years, first at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and more recently at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre.
But I had never seen him put a dance together from scratch until a couple of weeks ago, when he showed a group of students at Pasco-Hernando Community College how he was doing it for Swing!, the show that opened Friday at the Show Palace.
It was phantasmagorical.
"I'm going to do something creative so the audience doesn't get used to it," he said. "I won't do the obvious."
Then we watched him choose and discard steps and series until he got the one he wanted to go with a particular segment of music.
He creates so quickly that he forgets what he has created.
That's when a video camera comes in handy. With video, he captures what he's done so he can teach it to others.
When Leggio arrived at class, he was so hoarse that he could barely speak. But as he danced all over the stage, leaping and turning and talking almost non-stop, his voice became stronger and stronger.
Here's the weird part: Within moments after the class ended, he was once more so hoarse that he could barely whisper.
Now that is getting into the dance.
* * *
Five years ago, Justin Sargent was a short, chubby little kid whose mom suggested he try out for a part in Richey Suncoast Theatre's Oliver. He had never sung, danced or acted on a stage, but it sounded like fun, so he did.
And he loved it.
Justin played the Artful Dodger, and his big, mischievous grin made the audience love him.
Since then, Justin has been in 20 dramas, comedies and musicals, won five acting awards, grown about a foot taller and a foot narrower, graduated from Mitchell High School and gone off to college to study theater.
Last week, the aspiring actor joined more than 200 other acting hopefuls to vie for one of 12 spots in next year's bachelor of fine arts in musical theatre incoming class at the University of Central Florida.
"It was really difficult," he said, especially the dancing part, since his strong suit isn't dancing. "I pretty much smiled and nodded my way through it."
In the end, charm, style and talent won out, and he was accepted for next year's musical theatre class.
This means he won't be doing any readin', writin', and 'rithmetic at UCF; his entire college curriculum is geared for people who intend to become professional performers. All his classes will be in acting, movement, voice, dance, music theory, piano and other things that will prepare him for a life on the stage or in front of cameras.
Four years from now, he'll do an internship at a professional theater, then it's off to - will it be New York or Hollywood?
"Probably both," Justin said.
* * *
This week, I became something I thought I may never be: a mother-in-law.
My one and only son, Freddie J., married his longtime sweetheart, Jin Moon. Practical kids that they are, they married in a civil ceremony and spent the money that would have been spent on a big wedding as a down payment on their first home. It's on the side of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City, where they live. Instead of a big reception, they bought a new bed, dresser and armoire.
