Manuel Makes His Move To Music Man - dancer Manuel Herrera

Dance Magazine, Sept, 2001 by Liam Burke

IT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND A DANCER WHO WOULD HAVE TO THINK TWICE BEFORE ACCEPTING AN OFFER FROM BROADWAY'S HOTTEST CHOREOGRAPHER, SUSAN STROMAN. THE DANCEMAKER HAS WON A TONY AWARD FOR BEST CHOREOGRAPHY TWO YEARS RUNNING, NOT TO MENTION HER WINS IN 1992 AND 1995, FOR CRAZY FOR YOU AND SHOW BOAT. AND AT THIS YEAR'S AWARDS, THE PRODUCERS, A SHOW SHE CHOREOGRAPHED AND DIRECTED, TOOK HOME A RECORD NUMBER OF HONORS, including best musical. So perhaps it's not surprising that Manuel Herrera immediately accepted the part of Tommy Djilas in Stroman's revival of The Music Man when she offered it to him last spring. But for this 17-year-old, the decision could have been tough. Saying "yes" meant giving up his scholarship to the School of American Ballet.

The multi-talented dancer is well known on the competition circuit. He won the title "America's Teen Male Dancer of the Year" from American Dance Awards in 1998 and "National Senior Outstanding Dancer" at the New York City Dance Alliance in 2000. He received a Rudolf Nureyev Foundation Scholarship when he auditioned for SAB in 1999 and moved from Charlotte, North Carolina, into the Meredith Willson Residence Hall at Lincoln Center, which houses both SAB and Juilliard School students. Little did he know that he would soon be dancing on Broadway in Meredith Willson's most celebrated and popular musical.

"I always thought I would work as hard as I could to get into the New York City Ballet," says Herrera. "But then I heard about the audition for Tommy Djilas [a kid from the wrong side of tracks who falls in love with the mayor's daughter] and I was completely changed. I thought, `Forget it; I'm going to do what I really wanted to do from the very beginning.'" He went to the audition, got a callback, and three days later he found himself auditioning for Susan Stroman herself. "They offered me the job that day and I knew I was going to take it, but I wasn't sure how SAB would react."

He was relieved to find that his teachers were happy for him and assured him that if he wanted to come back, the door would be open. Though he's decided to leave the classical world for now, Herrera loves ballet and is grateful to the SAB, especially to teachers Jock Soto and Peter Boal. But The Music Man role is in his blood.

His grandparents, Fran and Robert Sullivan, were no strangers to musical theater. They founded the Fran Sullivan School of Dance forty-eight years ago in Charlotte, North Carolina. And Bob Sullivan, a student of the great Fred Astaire, actually trained Timmy Everett, who played Tommy Djilas in the film version of The Music Man.

Herrera began dancing at the age of 3 when his mother, Melanie Sullivan Coyle, also a dance teacher, saw her son imitating Michael Jackson in front of the television and decided to enroll him in her beginners' jazz class. By the age of 7, Herrera knew that he would make dance his career, and at 9, he was devoting every afternoon after school and all day Saturday to dance classes. "When we did competitions, we would practice on Sundays too," he adds, describing a demanding regime familiar to many young dancers.

Growing up in a family of hoofers made for a very focused life. "There wasn't one conversation we had that wasn't about dance," says Herrera. "All dinner conversations, all TV conversations, everything ended up turning around to dance. I would get a little annoyed at times!"

School might have provided some variation, but for Herrera it was unusually difficult. Being a dancer presents enough difficulties for any boy, but he was also the only Hispanic kid. Before entering school, he had no sense that classmates might consider him different. Herrera inherited his Venezuelan father's dark looks, but grew up with his mother and her relatives. "My whole family is white, so somehow I thought I was. But I was always made fun of and I was never considered cool because I wasn't a jock and I didn't play sports on any school team. I did play soccer with my dad's team, but I never bothered to explain that to the kids at school and I never let them get to me."

Instead, Herrera looked for opportunities to perform. When he was 14, he found out his school was going to launch a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Herrera decided to audition even though he'd have to sing--something he had no training in and had never done onstage. He sought advice on choosing a song for the audition, pulled it off, and landed the role of Joseph. His lack of professional vocal training didn't hurt him when he auditioned for The Music Man, since his part requires lots of dancing and just a little singing. But he's thinking about future Broadway work and is looking for a voice coach now.

Herrera is excited about being in the professional world. "I don't feel like I have to compete with people anymore, which is a lot of fun. You actually get to become colleagues with people instead of looking at them and thinking, `I'm gonna beat them' or `I'm gonna do so much better than them.'" He also loves the freedom. "In musicals you are allowed to emote onstage and make choices about how you want to play something, whereas in ballet, you are usually asked for specific feelings and you have no choice but to do them that way," he says.