Eclectic career keeps dancer Brackett on his toes

If there's a single song that defines dancer Kye Brackett, it's Duke Ellington's "I'm Just a Lucky So and So."

Brackett, 48, feels like he has been a lucky guy, especially in his professional life. In 1991, he responded to a casting call from Barry Manilow. He sang a song, danced and got the gig choreographing the Manilow performance. The winning song Brackett sang? "I'm Just a Lucky So and So."

"The style of the song represented my personality and the content spoke to how I feel about my life," says Brackett.

He has been with Manilow consistently since 2004 as a backup singer and a choreographer and will continue through the end of Manilow's run at the Las Vegas Hilton in December.

Brackett grew up during the 1970s in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was born in New York, but at 6 months old was sent to live with his Pentecostal grandmother, who raised him. The dancing bug bit about age 11, but he didn't dare let anyone know; dancing was prohibited by his grandmother's religion.

"I was kind of in the closet about performing arts," Brackett says. "In the Pentecostal religion, women couldn't wear makeup or pants and you couldn't dance. Imagine having that as the context of your life, and deep in yourself you love this singing/dancing thing. It was hard."

Performing with the choir gave him an outlet, but Brackett knew he wanted more. After graduating from high school, Los Angeles and the potential freedom it offered beckoned him. At 19, Brackett took his first dance class at a studio above a pizza parlor in Fullerton, Calif. A friend paid for it but after that, anytime he could scrape together a few extra dollars, he took a class. Soon, his friends were showing him moves, giving Brackett an informal education in tap, hip-hop, ballet, Latin.

"I wouldn't say I'm a master at any of them but I'm really good at all of them," he says.

He attended college and planned to major in psychology but one day during his sophomore year, Brackett realized he had never been able to imagine himself as a psychologist. Instead, his dreams were of performing onstage.

It didn't take long for his dream to come true, as it were.

He danced at Disney World, did dinner theater, traveled the states and Europe. He landed a few Broadway gigs and danced in a "horrible movie" with Pia Zadora, 1987's "Voyage of the Rock Aliens."

"I learned how to blend styles of dance while doing that movie," he says. "It was a very amazing time."

In a word, Brackett's background is eclectic, his training unorthodox. He strung together a handful of dance classes and his experiences at various gigs to develop a style that has landed him steady work since he first embarked on a career in dance in the 1980s.

Recently, he has started to think about where he wants to retire. He hopes for another five to 10 years onstage.

"For me, in Vegas, one of the things I'm most interested in is raising a community of artists," Brackett says. "We don't have a central place to hang out. The artists themselves, we haven't created a place that you know performers are going to show up to. I'm looking forward to creating that."

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564.