Bailey Dove 15 ~ Lyric Stage Scholarship

Hello, my name is Bailey Dove and I am a freshman at Vines High School in Plano, Texas. I am 15 years old and have been dancing for 13 years.  I currently dance at Dove Academy of Dance Arts where my instructors are Ericka Dove and Katie Dravenstott. I am studying Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Lyrical, Contemporary, Musical Theatre and Hip Hop and I am in their Senior Company. At Vines, I am in all honors/ap classes and I have been very involved in my Advanced Theatre class. I am a Bird Girl in Seussical and am the Dance Captain.

........................

This past summer I attended the Lyric Stage musical theater intensive, thanks to the Dance Council of North Texas. Upon receiving the scholarship, I learned that I needed to prepare 16 bars of a song to audition for the full scale production of Oklahoma that the Lyric Stage Camp was producing. Being brought up as a dancer, singing by myself was a somewhat foreign language to me.  In the past it was difficult to decide whether I wanted to become a dancer that belongs to companies, and concert dance, or go a different route to the musical theater world. It has always been my dream to dance on Broadway, after going to Lyric Stage this summer, it is no longer my dream to go to dance on Broadway, its my goal.

Studying under amazing directors and choreographers like: Elise Lavallee, Wendy Welch, and Alex Vorse for three weeks was truly a gift. The first day there was an audition, I walked into a huge rehearsal space at nine 0’clock in the morning, and sang my audition song in front of  eight strangers sitting at an audition table and 40 other people sitting there waiting there for their chance to audition. After lunch, it was time for the dance audition, then acting. The next morning the cast list was up.  I was cast as Ike, and a featured dancer in the show. There were so many talented people I got to work with, the cast was extremely talented. One of the most exciting things about this show, was that our cast got  I to use the professional set and costumes of the production of the professional Oklahoma that Lyric Stage produced. Not only did we rehearse and get Oklahoma ready, we had singing, acting, and dance classes that we did regularly. In dance with Elise Lavallee, we did technique things along with hip hop and contemporary combinations. In acting, we spent a lot of our time with Wendy Welch on audition techniques, and we also worked on improv exercises. In singing class, we went over things like reading music, sight reading, and singing exercises to improve you’re voice. We did all this and put on an entire musical. Valerie Galloway Chapa did huge things for our camp, she set up sessions with the actors from the professional production of Oklahoma for the cast to talk to, stage combat classes, we even had theme days, where we had to come dressed up as TV show characters, or book characters. When we opened with Oklahoma, it was a success, not one person was more important than the other, its so hard to believe we put it together in three weeks.

After the intensive was over, I was ready to jump back into classes and learn as much as I could, to become an even better dancer, and expand in the areas of theater and singing also. But unfortunately I tore two ligaments in my ankle running, at the moment the most I’ll be in the dance world and musical theater world is an audience member. I can’t wait to be back on stage performing again, I tell people now, that I’m taking this injury as a wake up call. I know what I need to get better and also I will never again take for granted that I can go and take dance classes everyday, it’s a huge privilege. I thank the Dance Council for giving me the opportunity to go to Lyric Stage and learn as much as I did this summer, and I can’t wait to dance again.