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A star volunteer at a local dance academy gets the surprise of her life. So do the students.

By RODNEY THRASH
Published March 6, 2007

	Volunteer Karen Hamilton is stunned when her jazz class is suddenly full of friends and students yelling "surprise!" at the Soulful Arts Dance Academy in St. Petersburg.
[Times photo: Martha Rial]

ST. PETERSBURG - It's an unusually brisk Saturday afternoon, and inside the Soulful Arts Dance Academy Paulette Walker Johnson is giving her students last minute instructions. "You're going to act like you're taking a class," she tells them. "Okay? "And that's when everyone will come in and say, 'Surprise!' " The ruse has been six months in the making. Karen Hamilton, the super volunteer the academy will honor, has not a clue. Across the hall, in a holding room decorated with memorabilia and old photographs from Hamilton's days in New York, more than 100 people await their cue.

Karen Hamilton lives in Largo. She's married to a childhood friend, Lawrence Hamilton.

His job forced them to relocate to Florida in 1991. Hamilton was hesitant at first. She was in the exact place she needed to be for her line of work: New York. Living anyplace else could mean the end of her career. She came around, eventually.

They have two children. Lauren is now 14. Lawrence, everyone calls him Boo, is 8.

Hamilton ferries them to Soulful Arts Dance Academy, where they learn tap, jazz and traditional dance. She spends most her days at Soulful Arts, where she is known as Ms. K. She's on the academy's board. She runs its scholarship program. She records concerts. She takes pictures. She answers phones. And when she's not doing any of that, she asks, "What do I need to do to help around here?"

She's always in the background, doing the jobs it's easy not to notice.

Hamilton loves dancing. When she was 3, her mother enrolled her in a class to help with her coordination. "You can stop anytime," her mother told her. It has been the only constant in Hamilton's life.

She still has the lithe body of a dancer, but she doesn't dance anymore.

She has battled breast cancer for the past three years. She turned 49 three Thursdays ago and found out - on her birthday no less - that she is in remission.

She doesn't talk about it or herself much. "Humble," her friends and family say.

But before marriage and babies, Florida and cancer, she had Broadway.

- - -

"We are going to attempt to take you back to 1978," said Walker Johnson, the artistic director at Soulful Arts Dance Academy.

As if on command, the audience shouted "woo!"

Back then, Hamilton was Karen E. Fraction, a student at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. On a whim, she auditioned for George Faison, the award-winning dancer. He did the choreography for The Wiz, an all-black spinoff of The Wizard of Oz. The play won seven Tony Awards and was adapted into a movie that starred Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Lena Horne.

After the studio quieted, Walker Johnson continued her introduction:

"Today, the dancers of Soulful Arts Dance Academy will give you a little taste of Brand New Day."

The lights dimmed. Dancers wearing colorful masks positioned themselves around the perimeter of the studio. They extended their legs and arms, just as Hamilton had nearly 30 years ago.

Tears, happy ones, streamed down both sides of her face.

There were more familiar songs and dance routines:

Fabulous Feet from The Tap Dance Kid. ("That was my very, very first Broadway show.") She was 24 and, by this time, hooked to the stage.

Crunchy Granola from Bob Fosse's Dancin'. ("That tore me up. I had done the exact same number. (My daughter) is doing my choreography. She is doing the steps I actually did back in '80.")

During the performances, Hamilton seemed lost in the movements of the teenagers in black leotards and dancing slippers.

Sitting on the front row, she followed their every step. The arch of their feet. The precision of their twirls. The punch of their kicks.

Hamilton kept a balled-up Kleenex in her right hand. Some of the people sitting around her that Saturday didn't understand the source of her tears.

For Hamilton, each dance routine was like an encore of her life's story.

It was a story some of them, until then, had never heard.

Rodney Thrash can be reached at (727) 893-8352 or rthrash@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 5, 2007, 18:27:15]