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Fast Stepper

A dancing legacy leads
Joshua Bergasse on a
yearlong tour.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

N,W3 oshua Bergasse has enjoyed
watching Fisher Theatre musi-
cals for a good part of his 22 years,
but it wasn't until recently that
he thought about dancing in one
of them.
To his surprise, it didn't take long for
his thoughts to become reality.
Mr. Bergasse is dancing — and singing
and acting — the role of Baby John in West
Side Story, which runs Sept. 5-24 at the
Fisher as the initial stop in a yearlong tour
that covers the United States, Canada and
Japan.
His character is the first mentioned in
the show and the last one off stage.
"I was planning on moving to Los An

in the fall and trying my luck out
there, but a friend of mine who lives in
New York told me about the auditions and
pressured me into going," said Mr.
Bergasse. His dancing career developed
at Annette & Company in Farmington
Hills, the dance school owned and direct-
ed by his mother.
"I didn't want to try, but my friend and
my mother pushed me into it. I didn't ex-
pect to get as far as I did on the first day,
when there were 400 guys trying for parts.
I expected to lose out completely.
"When I learned the combinations of
steps were the original 1959 Jerome Rob-
bins choreography for West Side Story, I
thought of the audition more or less like
a class, an experience enabling me to
work on certain steps for two or three
hours.
"The Jerome Robbins style is some-
thing we have trained in at my mother's
studio.
"When the audition was over, they
said they wanted me back in three days,
which was a Friday. About half the guys
from the original session were at the call-
back. I went home after that second au-
dition and found out the following
Tuesday that I got the part.
"It wasn't until I actually landed the
job that I could say I was going to be a
professional dancer because I never
knew if I had what it takes to do that.
Maybe I was trying not to set myself up
for a big letdown because I know that
it may only last a year."
Mr. Bergasse gave up his teaching re-
sponsibilities at Annette's in July, just
before beginning New York rehearsals
for his new role. "I've been watching
dancing since I was very young," recalled
Mr. Bergasse, whose younger brother,
Mark, is literally following in his foot-
steps by teaching at Annette's.
"Before I turned 12 or 13, I chose to go
to a couple of dance classes at a time. I
did it because I was Annette's son and
why not?"
There were a couple of years when Mr.
Bergasse did not really
Joshua Bergasse: want to take lessons
Quick on his feet.
anymore, but all that
changed during the
summer he was 15.
"I worked in the summer arts program
at Oakland Community College and was
in Grease and West Side Story," he said.
"I fell in love with the shows, and I start-
ed to realize what I really loved about all
of this was the dancing.
"I started to concentrate on that, and
I applied for scholarships so I could study
with some of the people who were mak-
ing the waves."
A 1991 Berkley High School gradu-
ate, Mr. Bergasse won short-term schol-
arships to the Tremaine Dance Center

in Los Angeles and the Steps on Broad-
way program in New York.
"While I was in Los Angeles, I went to
a big cattle call for tap dancers for a scene
in a movie," he said. "Somebody noticed
me in the line and asked me to audition
for another movie, I'll Do Anything. I got
the part, but they cut out the dancing."
Mr. Bergasse found jobs as a film extra,
did a couple of commercials, returned to
Michigan and taught at Annette & Com-
pany, where he specialized in jazz, tap and
street dancing (hip hop).
Although he took some general cours-
es at Wayne State University, he decided
to spend more hours pursuing his primary
interest.
There is one job experience he believes
is about to prove helpful in preparing him
for his upcoming theatrical travels — tour-
ing intermittently for eight months with
an industrial show promoting Toyota.
`The dancing in West Side Story is more
important than the singing and the act-
ing because Jerome Robbins saw it as a
story told in dance," Mr. Bergasse said. "It
was a ballet of sorts with all the expres-
sion and anger coming out through the
dancing.
"When I auditioned in New York in
April, we danced first, and they cut peo-
ple. Then we danced again, and they made
another cut. Then they had us sing, and
they made more cuts.
"When we came back three days later,
we started dancing again right away."
Mr. Bergasse, whose bar mitzvah was
at B'nai Moshe, learned to sing while per-
forming in local stage productions. He be-

A little pressure leads
to a role.

lieves dance training also taught him
acting because the movements express
character.
"In West Side Story, I am one of the
gang members, and each gang member
represents a certain kind of street kid,"
said Mr. Bergasse. "I represent the baby
of the group, the smaller one, the skinnier
one. I cry every once in a while. My feel-
ings get hurt, and rm scared a lot. There's
almost a war going on, and everybody's
trying to console me in their own, gang-
type way.
"I'm really excited about doing all that
on stage, and I'm excited about the re-
hearsals. I'm going to feed off all the work.
Around the dance studio, I usually push
everybody a lot harder than they like be-
cause I feed off that energy.
"The last show I saw at the Fisher was
Kiss of the Spider Woman, and one of my
favorite things was the four guy dancers
moving around the Spider Woman. I know
I could do that, and I plan to audition for
Spider Woman when I'm done with West

Side Story.

West Side Story will be at the Fish-
er Theatre Sept. 5-24. The curtain goes up
at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.
Sundays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and
Sundays. For information, call (313)
872-1000. ❑