WHILE his friends shoot hoops and video-game monsters, 13-year-old Travis Moore spends his afternoons in a roomful of girls, practicing plies and pirouettes.Meet Harlem’s Billy Elliot.Like the title character in the Oscar-nominated film – who was forced to keep his dance lessons a secret to avoid the ridicule of his tough, working-class father – Travis keeps mum about his passion for ballet.
The soft-spoken youngster admits he’s been nervous about telling his classmates that he spends his afternoons and Saturdays at the Dance Theater of Harlem, studying ballet, tap and jazz.
“They might call me names and stuff, like ‘sissy,'” says Travis, who goes straight to classes from school, and squeezes in homework and study around his five-days-a-week schedule.
He was horrified two weeks ago to discover that, after five years of successfully keeping his secret, a friend and a number of his seventh-grade teachers were in the audience when he performed at a local school to mark African-American History Month.
“I didn’t know they were there, but they told me at school the next day,” he says. “They called me, like, a superstar. I would have been nervous if I’d known they were there.”
But Travis should take heart, says Laveen Naidu, who heads the DTH’s scholarship program.
“Traditionally, the whole idea of boys dancing has always met with snide comments,” he says. “I know. I got it from my friends when I first started dancing.
“Ironically, the people who made fun of me became my biggest fans. When I performed, they’d come and watch. And, of course, they’d come and hang around the studio a lot – mainly because there were lots of girls there.”
Travis’ ballet teachers say the shy youngster blossoms in class; that his love of classical dance is stronger than any taunts that may come his way.
He already has the support of his mother, who lives with Travis and his four siblings in a noisy Harlem neighborhood full of vacant lots and abandoned buildings. And the popularity of “Billy Elliot” may boost the number of male dancers at DTH, where 275 of the 300 students are female.
“I hope the movie is going to lead to a lot more boys wanting to at least give it a try,” Naidu says.
Travis joined the DTH scholarship program – students get full tuition and ballet outfits – after a recruitment drive at his school five years ago.
“These students are chosen because they demonstrate a talent for classical dance,” Naidu says. “Very few of them will end up being professional dancers, but the training affords them the opportunity to develop the discipline and concentration that we hope will translate into the rest of their lives.”
Just before heading off to class – where his white T-shirt and black shorts contrast sharply with the mauve leotards of his classmates – Travis confides that he doubts he’ll make a career of it.
“But right now, it’s what I like doing,” he says simply. “If I wasn’t going to classes, I’d be watching TV.”
