DJ Hoyt has a plan, a big plan.
At 13, Hoyt has set his sights on becoming a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon to be specific. How does he plan to finance the many years of undergraduate and medical school he faces?
By dancing. Hoyt plans to parlay his love of dance into a college scholarship. And as a boy in an area dominated by girls, his chances of achieving his dream are good.
“If you’re a boy and you’ve got the abilities, you can pretty much write your own ticket,” said Tom Morrell, artistic director of Ballet, Etc., and Hoyt’s teacher for four years. “Boys are maybe 1 or 2 percent of the studio’s entire enrollment, but with proper work, dedication, desire and skill, they can quite often go where they want to go.”
Morrell has taught boys of all ages since he opened his studio five years ago. He recently designed a portion of his most recent original ballet, “Scenes From a Park,” with Hoyt and his best friend and fellow dancer, Daniel Nedow, 12, in mind. Having two boys to work with when writing and choreographing the ballet was a treat, Morrell said.
“I knew exactly what I wanted to do for them when I put the ballet together,” said Morrell, a dancer and teacher for more than 30 years. “I wanted to set up a story line where the boys were very competitive because boys are very competitive. I gave them a lot of stylized choreography with wrestling, racing, one upping the other guy and they threw themselves into it.”
Hoyt loves to dance and spends more than 12 hours a week at Ballet, Etc., taking ballet, modern, jazz, tap and hip-hop classes. A seventh-grade student at the Traverse Bay Community School, he is also a member of the Northwest Michigan Ballet Theater.
“My favorite part is jumping because it’s fun. The best moves are in the air,” said Hoyt, who has wrestled and also loves to race BMX bikes and ride a wakeboard. “Boys jump higher and do more with their feet than girls.”
Nedow takes modern, jazz and ballet classes and enjoys being on stage as a dancer.
“I like the adrenaline rush,” said Nedow, a sixth-grade student at Leland Public Schools. “Our dances are a really good workout.”
Dance Arts Academy has some boys enrolled in classes, including ice skater Joel Deer, a regular for years. This year, the studio also started two hip-hop classes for boys, one for teens and one for pre-teens. The classes have eight students between them and teacher Melissa Mauray terms the experiment a success.
“I sent out flyers saying that in hip-hop boys could just come in their street clothes and try it out; they didn’t have to wear a leotard,” Mauray said. “I think there are a lot of guys that would be interested in doing it. I just threw it out there to see. Hip-hop is a more accessible form of dance.”
When the Dance Center stages a major production, such as last fall’s Cinderella, they often draw on male dancers from out of the area to supplement their company. Betty Kune, co-owner of the studio, said they have one boy who is very dedicated to dance and drives from Evert three times a week to take classes. Other boys have not continued, in part because of the teasing they got.
“Those boys who take classes seem to be very interested and do well,” Kune said. “The problem is their friends in school. We’ve had some other teen-age boys and they’ve stopped I think because of the pressure from the outside.”
With his dream held firmly in his mind, Hoyt does not let any teasing bother him.
“Dancing is half cool and half teasing,” he said. “Tom’s a good role model.”
Morrell, who began dancing in college after years of high school sports, knows first-hand both the teasing and the athletic challenges that are part of being a male dancer. The former track and cross-country athlete said that dancing has been the hardest overall physical challenge of any sport he’s ever done.
“I think people don’t understand or appreciate that, because it is artistic it doesn’t seem masculine,” Morrell said. “A lot of it is educating the community that it is OK to be a dancer, for males to be in the arts.”
Performances of ‘Scenes From a Park’ will be held at the Central High School auditorium on Friday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, March 16, at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at Ballet, Etc., Studio 101 and at the door. For more information, call the studio at 929-2787.