‘Billy Elliot’ dancing into Smith Center for eight-performance run

Everybody has growing pains.

Not everybody has them while starring in a Tony-winning musical.

But that’s exactly what’s happening with — and to — Ben Cook, one of four young performers playing the title role in “Billy Elliot,” which opens Tuesday at The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall.

Now 15, Cook makes his final bow as Billy during the show’s eight-performance Las Vegas run.

Based on the Oscar-nominated movie, “Billy Elliot” (set in 1984) focuses on a British miner’s son who discovers a passion for dancing — much to the dismay of his gritty father, who’s on strike alongside fellow miners to protest the shutdown of the local coal mines.

When Elton John saw the movie at its 2000 Cannes Film Festival premiere, it struck a chord with him, according to an article on his website.

“The story of young Billy, a gifted working-class boy with artistic ambitions seemingly beyond his reach, had so many parallels to my own life,” John is quoted in the story. At the movie’s conclusion, “I had to be helped up the aisle, sobbing. The film had really got under my skin.”

Little wonder, then, that when a stage adaptation was being developed, producers approached him about writing the music for the show.

With book and lyrics by screenwriter Lee Hall and Stephen Daldry once again directing, “Billy Elliot” opened in London in 2005 — and is still running. The 2008 Broadway production won 10 Tony Awards — including best musical. (It closed last year.)

Cook first joined “Billy Elliot’s” Broadway cast (as Tall Boy), understudying the role of Billy’s pal Michael. He eventually played Michael on tour before moving up to the title role.

But after three years with the show, he’s already 5 feet 6 inches — well past the title role’s height limit of 4 feet 10 inches.

That’s “a little too tall,” Cook admits. And “my voice has gotten a little lower.”

So he knows it’s time to bid Billy farewell — but not before giving it all he’s got one last time. Make that two times.

That’s because each of the tour’s title-role performers — Drew Minard , Noah Parets and Mitchell Tobin round out the title-role quartet — “each do two performances a week, and they stand by for two performances” in case someone is injured or sick, says Nora Brennan, the show’s children’s casting director.

Brennan, who started with the show in 2006, “traveled the country looking for boys who dance,” she notes in a telephone interview from her New York office.

Ideally, they were “10 to 12 years old, with strong ballet — and the potential to learn tap,” she says. “And all this with a Geordie dialect” representing northern England’s Tyneside region.

In short, the showbiz kids had to be “really focused,” Brennan says, “with strong determination and tenacity.”

Someone like Cook, who went to New York (from his home in the Washington, D.C., area) “about 12 to 15 times for auditions,” he recalls.

Unlike most of his fellow Billys, Cook’s background is more tap and jazz, he says. “And then specifically for Billy, I had to start doing ballet.”

That was a challenge, he says, “having to learn ballet pretty quickly and at a fairly older age.” (Age in this case being relative.)

When Brennan first saw the musical in London, she thought, “ ‘Where am I going to find somebody who can do this?’ ” she recalls.

Sometimes, potential Billys “come to us out of the blue” — the case with Tobin, who auditioned in Florida four years ago and was “clearly on the track,” Brennan recalls.

“So, every six months,” she would check in with him, until, last year, “it was time. He was the right height, the right age — and he’s got the skills.”

Brennan also contacts dance teachers about potential Billys — and Michaels and other young cast members.

“I reach out to them, they reach out to me,” she says. (Potential cast members also may audition via video online at www.bebilly.com.)

“They have to be fine thoroughbreds to get through a performance,” says Steven Minning , the show’s supervising resident director, who keeps the touring production sharp through periodic visits with the cast.

When Minning revisits the show on tour, he’s there to determine whether cast members “are telling the story as they last left it,” he says. After performing the show “day after day after day, you need that outside eye.”

Generally, however, “the kids are great,” he says, “because they get it.”

And in part, Cook says, that’s because it’s easy for him to identify with the characters he’s played.

“Michael is more happy-go-lucky,” he explains. “He doesn’t care what other people think of him.”

By contrast, Billy is “very emotional. He’s angry a lot,” as he pursues his passion for dance despite his father’s opposition.

Fortunately for Cook, his parents “have been very supportive,” he says.

He moved to New York at 11 — while they stayed home with his two sisters.

On the road, he has a guardian who travels with him, and tutors who tour with the show see to the young performers’ schooling.

“I’m sure it’s been pretty tough on them,” Cook says of his parents. But “I definitely want to stay in performing my whole life,” he adds, so “I’m very grateful.”

As for why he loves to dance, Cook cites “the emotion that goes into it — and the emotion you can also give. It’s such a great feeling.”

That’s also the secret to “Billy Elliot’s” success, Minning says.

“First of all, finding that passion” can be difficult for anyone, he says. “And once you have stumbled across it,” as Billy does, “you’re rooting for that underdog.”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.