ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609160003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: WHAT IS ART?
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES STAFF WRITER
William Smith was casually strolling among Westside elementary's magnet school open house exhibits when a group of posters, costumes and videos just seemed to leap out and grab him. He was nine years old at the time. He didn't know then and doesn't to this day understand exactly what about dance draws him.
"I just like it and it only keeps getting better," the 15-year old William Fleming-Ruffner Magnet Center sophomore recently said.
Where dance, other than tap, is being done, Smith is likely to be. He was in a June production of Puss 'N Boots at the Post School of Ballet, where he is a student. In April, he was featured in "Henry Street!" at Virginia Western Community College. That same month he appeared with the Southwest Virginia Ballet at the Southeast Regional Ballet Association Festival in Knoxville, Tenn.
Over the years, he's danced in Coppelia; The Snow Maiden; The Nutcracker; and at Miss Jabberwock pageants. In addition to local and regional appearances, Smith has studied and performed in North Carolina, Florida and Mississippi, and has his toes turned toward the Boston ballet next summer and New York City at some not too distant future date.
Extremely poised and confident for one so young, while at the same time also endearingly soft spoken, Smith is as sure of his convictions as he is of his steps. It takes him only a moment to answer that what he does definitely is art.
"I think of art as a way of expressing yourself and how you feel," he said, emphasizing the you. "I don't think there can be such a thing as bad art - only different. We may not be used to it."
He considers his own choreography as well as his interpretations of others' routines as art. The talented teen-ager, who also began studying piano at age nine and now plays for the Youth Sunday School at his member church, High Street Baptist, said that skill further enhances his art.
"My musicality helps my dance," he explained. "It means that I'm able to quickly catch a beat. Some schools - like in Russia - require that dance students also study a musical instrument."
Smith looks to Russia for two additional studies: dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev.
"I have a lot of role models, and I want to be sort of like them," he said. "I take lessons from others, but I want to be in my own category."
He knows what it will take to get there, and so adheres, without too much complaint, to the rigorous practice schedules and strict dress and dietary disciplines required in his field.
"Yes, I've watched 'The Turning Point' many times, and it's true to life," he laughed about the award-winning movie depicting the cut-throat world of ballet.
He also maintains a 3.5 academic grade point average, and while he's never considered giving up dance, he wistfully speculated that to do so would give him more time to spend with his mother, Gwen; father, William Randolph, Sr.; younger sister, Randi Denice; and to do "teen stuff."
"It's stressful," Smith said. But once you get on stage, you know it was worth it. The bows are the best part. To give up the thing you love the most, that would be really hard."
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Cindy Pinkston. Fifteen-year-old William Smith hasby CNBamassed an impressive resume in dance. color.