Fusing story and dance

It was another rehearsal day at the Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts, and Marie Hoffman was ready to rock and roll.

The dance department’s Repertory Ensemble had one week before its first big show of the year, “Fusion 2010,” was set to open, and a dozen-odd teenage dancers went through a routine set to the Meat Loaf classic “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” The multi-part song switched back and forth from loud to soft, tender to intense — and so did the teacher, as Hoffman cajoled, praised and sometimes tongue-lashed her students to get their act together.

“I need to see my story! I need to see faces,” she proclaimed, urging the performers to show more emotion. A moment later, when two dancers began chatting out of turn, she snapped, “Don’t speak! God, I thought being in the arts was supposed to make you smarter.”

The troupe started again, and Hoffman began excitedly talking with academy Director Diane Makas about a student who was showing promise. Then she spotted something that displeased her, and she flopped her body across the floorboards in mock agony. Within seconds, she was smiling again, sitting cross-legged and shimmying to the music.

Hoffman, a former member of the Jan Van Dyke Dance Group in North Carolina and an instructor at the academy for seven years, is not timid about expressing her feelings. But her students, who seek careers in dance, don’t object to her bluntness.

“I’m glad she’s tough, because we all end up looking good,” said Erica Bresnan, 16, who is in her third year at the academy.

“She trying to simulate real life,” added senior Mark Brown, 17. “So it’s pretty reasonable.”

An eclectic program

“Fusion,” which the academy has put on every winter for the last 12 years, brings together all the dance department’s ensembles — Jazz, Ballet, Modern, Tap and Repertory, which is the touring troupe and the one that rehearses longest and hardest. It’s also the one Hoffman oversees, and she does what she can to groom young professionals.

“I push them, for sure,” she said. “But that’s the nature of this ensemble. These are not kids who are pursuing dance as a hobby or extracurricular activity.”