Poised To Succeed At Ballet

The Dancer: Bilal Smith

A Shot At 'Fame'

"I'm gonna live forever.

I'm gonna learn how to fly

High!"

- from "Fame," by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford

The biggest mystery about Bilal Smith isn't how he managed to get accepted into the Baltimore School for the Arts' highly selective dance program when he'd never taken a movement class in his entire life.

The deeper question is how a kid from Baltimore's inner city first envisioned ballet as a potential career choice.

Bilal, now 16 and a junior, grew up in a tough neighborhood in which residents might tolerate break-dance or hip-hop artists, but not guys in leotards. Money was tight - his mother works in a cafeteria, his father is a community activist and Bilal has four sisters. Before the boy enrolled at the arts school, he'd never even attended a dance performance.

"When I was 10 or 11, I remember watching a ballet on PBS, and I just fell in love with it," he says. It was, at best, a compromised introduction to the art form, but it didn't matter. The strong, skinny kid with the flexible hands and feet was instantly hooked.

"My father didn't like it," Bilal says. "He'd see me dancing with my sisters and the other girls, and he'd be like, 'No. Not my son.' "

In eighth grade, Bilal picked up a brochure for BSA at a high school fair. "I saw that they had a dance program," he says, "And I heard that they didn't really look at your grades. At the time, me and my father talked through my mother, and I don't think she told him I was going to apply."

His audition was unconventional, to say the least, beginning with his attire, which consisted of long socks, baggy shorts and a sleeveless white shirt. Bilal also was supposed to perform a routine that prospective dancers had been taught at a previous workshop. Instead, he improvised a few steps to the soundtrack from the 1998 vampire film "Blade."

"I didn't have the music that went with the dance," he said. "It cost $1, and I didn't have the money."

Norma Pera, who heads the arts school's dance department, clutches her hair and moans in mock horror when she recalls that audition.

"He wasn't supposed to do that," she says. "We'd have given him the music. He probably didn't want to ask."

But not only was Bilal blessed with an ideal body for a dancer; the teachers at the audition noticed how hard he worked and how quickly he learned the steps they taught him. When he left, he knew he had a shot at being admitted.

For the next two weeks, Bilal checked the mailbox obsessively. "When the letter came, I tried to peek through the window of the envelope and see what it said," he says. "I thought I saw the word 'accepted,' and I started to cry."

As soon as classes started in the fall, Bilal's teachers were struck by his drive. During breaks, other students in the junior ensemble would catch their breaths, shake out sore muscles and chat.

But Bilal would be off in the corner doing some impossible stretch that required his toes to rest on top of his shoulders, or practicing the routine he'd just been taught. He'd even do the splits while he was doing his math homework.

He's come so far so fast, it's easy to forget that he's only been dancing for two years. This past summer, Bilal received a full scholarship to refine his technique with the American Ballet Theatre, arguably the nation's top dance troupe.

A professional career is starting to seem a genuine possibility, so Bilal has made the ultimate sacrifice and begun to work harder in his academic classes. He knows that if he fails even one subject, he won't be allowed to perform in the school's holiday production of "The Nutcracker." Come June, he'd have to stay in Baltimore and attend summer school instead of studying movement with a professional troupe.

"I can really go somewhere with dance," he says, "and I can't let anything stop me."

About the Baltimore School for the Arts

Founded: 1980

Bragging rights: One of the top five public arts high schools in the U.S.

Famous alumni: Actress Jada Pinkett Smith, fashion designer Christian Siriano, rapper Tupac Shakur, actress Tracie Thoms

2009-2010 enrollment: 372

Programs of Concentration: Visual arts, dance, music and theater

Acceptance rate: 7 percent of the 1,300 eighth-grade students who audition annually

Where the kids live: 75 percent, Baltimore City; 25 percent Maryland

Racial background: 60 percent African-American; 40 percent white/other

Percentage of BSA graduates going to college: Greater than 95 percent