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Entertainment

Catch a rising star

Calvin Royal will bring The Nutcracker and Chocolate Nutcracker to life, but how good is this teenage boy? "Every fiber of him is an artist,' ' a dance teacher says.

By RITA FARLOW
Published November 20, 2005

After being injured in a car accident in April 2004, Calvin Royal was forced to take a break. The 16-year-old ballet dancer was prescribed lots of rest and a regimen of physical therapy to alleviate pain from two bulging discs in his back.

"(The accident) happened after I was leaving a rehearsal. I didn't feel anything at first, but after months of dancing, I realized something was wrong. So I went to the doctor and found out I had a severe back injury," Calvin said.

Unable to dance for two months after the diagnosis, Calvin was eager to get back to his studies.

"I wasn't allowed to do any dance, any strenuous exercise. When I wasn't dancing, it was a very hard time. It was hard for me not to be able to move the way I could before," he said.

Once cleared to dance again, Calvin started retraining his body.

"After getting back into dance, taking classes constantly and working really hard, it's got me back to where I was and I've been working to get even better than I was," he said.

Calvin, a junior at Gibbs High School's Pinellas County Center for the Arts, will perform lead roles in The Nutcracker at the Palladium on Nov. 21-22 and in The Chocolate Nutcracker at Ruth Eckerd Hall Dec. 9-11. He has performed in The Chocolate Nutcracker since the fourth grade. This will be his first year in the traditional Nutcracker put on by the St. Petersburg Ballet Company.

"He really is quite a talented dancer. If you were to ask me my prediction, this young man could definitely make it in the world of dance. He's exceptionally talented," said Marsha Wilson, teacher and choreographer at the Academy of Ballet Arts in St. Petersburg, where Calvin trains.

Calvin repaid the compliment. "It's a wonderful school," he said. "I've learned so much (there) and grown a lot - as a dancer, as a person and as an artist." Suzanne Pomerantzeff, one of Calvin's teachers at Gibbs and director of the St. Petersburg Ballet Company, said she was in awe of him from the first time she met him, when he applied to the Center for the Arts.

"He'd had no real formal dance training at all. To be perfectly honest, from day one, there was an artist standing in front of me. He's got a dancer's physical attributes; he's one who can do both classical and contemporary dance. But what's so beautiful about him is his soul. Every fiber of him is an artist,' ' Pomerantzeff said.

Calvin, who started dancing tap in the fourth grade, said performances he saw by students at John Hopkins Middle School inspired him to go into the arts. He was accepted to the Gibbs program and began studying dance in earnest in the ninth grade. His focus is ballet and modern dance, which incorporates nonclassical techniques and the study of the history and movements of the art form itself, Calvin said.

"It's the overall aspect of it, just being able to move and express yourself creatively through movement," he said.

Calvin, who spent six weeks after his freshman year studying at the prestigious Rock School of dance in Philadelphia, said he practices "almost every day of every week. On a normal weekend, on a Saturday, about eight to nine hours."

In the traditional Nutcracker at the Palladium, Calvin will play the Arabian and the Cavalier ("the prince of the land that Clara inhabits"). In The Chocolate Nutcracker, Calvin will perform a pas de deux in the role that parallels the Arabian in the traditional version of the ballet.

"It's basically a dance between two partners, two characters, a male and female part. It's a very sensual role between the two characters," he said.

Pomerantzeff said the sky is the limit for Calvin, in dance or any other career path.

"If he wants to make (dancing professionally) his life - which right now he does - he will. He's worked for everything he has. It's not that it comes easy. It's that he has such a strong work ethic. He never lets go."

The St. Petersburg Ballet Company will present The Nutcracker at 7:30 p.m. Monday and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Palladium Theater, 253 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg. Tickets are $15 for adults; $10 for seniors and children. For information, call 822-3590. Public performances of The Chocolate Nutcracker will be at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 9, 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10, and 2 p.m. Dec. 11 at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. Tickets are $14.50 to $19.50. Call 791-7400.

[Last modified November 20, 2005, 00:54:20]