SEQUIM — Dancer Rose Kelly, at just 17, found sublime inspiration in cinema: The kind from Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
Trained as a gymnast, she studied the work of Gene Kelly, Eleanor Powell, Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse, and began preparing her own tribute performance.
This production, titled “Chandelier,” will take the stage at Olympic Theatre Arts, 414 N. Sequim Ave., for one show only Saturday, as Kelly presents a mix of tap, ballet and modern dance.
Tickets to the 7:30 p.m. performance are $18 in advance at Olympic Theatre Arts and, if still available, $20 at the door.
The OTA box office is open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday at 360-683-7326.
Kelly and her mother, Dotti Holland, have created the Ceres Dance Theatre, a company named after the Roman goddess Ceres. They have given performances at smaller venues, and “this is the biggest so far,” said Holland.
A soprano, Holland plans to do a pre-show revue of songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” and “The King and I,” among other numbers.
Holland and her daughter, who live in the Discovery Bay area, are also working on a “drum stage:” a tall, lighted structure for the dance number “Drum Crazy.”
That will come in the first half of the show along with Nat King Cole’s “My Burning Heart” and others from the early 20th century.
Holland, meantime, notes Kelly’s dedication to her art.
“She taught herself,” by watching the dancers in classic movies such as “Silk Stockings” and “Easter Parade,” and combined that with studies at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle and instruction from a private teacher in Port Townsend.
“She’s also become very contemporary,” Holland said, adding that the second half of Saturday’s show will be given over to modern dance to songs such as Bruno Mars’ “It Will Rain” and Labrinth’s “Jealous.” Emily West’s “Chandelier” will be the second act’s finale.
Kelly says still more inspiration comes from classical ballet dancer Misty Copeland, the author of Life In Motion.
A member of the American Ballet Theatre of New York City, Copeland became the company’s second African American female soloist in August 2007.
This past June, she was named principal dancer, making her the first African American woman to ever be promoted to the position in ABT’s 75-year history.
Yet Kelly, despite her ballet training, does not call herself a ballerina.
“You have to do ballet to do anything,” she said, but “I like to mix it up.”
