Dance studio shares the spotlight

RALEIGH -- With just two weeks to go, CC & Co. Dance Complex students are rehearsing for their big show, the annual "Holiday Wishes" recital, but a major distraction is keeping them from focusing.

Noelle Marsh is home.

The 18-year-old dancer from Sanford had made it to the top 10 of the Fox show "So You Think You Can Dance," but her Cinderella-from-the-South run was over, having ended Dec. 3 when fewer fans phoned in to support her than the four other female dancers still on the show.

Standing outside the studios' doors in the Six Forks Station shopping center, Marsh feels as if she is about to go on stage; she is afraid to go in. But as she walks in, other dancers see her and start clapping.

"They have lot going on. They have dress rehearsals. But I walked in and everyone was so happy to see me," she said. "That was nice, to come back to that."

Marsh is the third CC& Co. dancer to compete on "So You Think You Can Dance." She was joined in the top 20 by Ariana Debose, though judges cut her after just one episode. In 2006, Martha Nichols of Raleigh made the top 10.

Christy Curtis - the "CC" in CC & Co. - is not one to boast, but when pressed, she acknowledges that having three dancers make the television show means, "I must be doing something right."

Curtis opened CC & Co. ( www.cccodance.com) in 2004 after moving to North Carolina from Cedar Rapids when she was 18 ("I just had to get out of Iowa," she said.). She intended to study dance at East Carolina University, but she found so much work at studios that she dropped out to teach full time. Seventeen years later she opened her studio.

Peak chaos hour

Visit CC & Co. any weekday afternoon, and it will be bustling. More than 800 students and adults take classes here. At 5 p.m. - what studio manager Karen Talarico calls "peak chaos hour" - girls are dashing up and down the stairs, and over the din of young voices squealing hello to their BFFs, parents are hollering: "Do you have all your shoes?"

These girls - and they are mostly girls - carry around a lot of footwear. Tap shoes, ballet slippers, low-heeled jazz shoes.

Curtis is a cheerleader for versatility, and her enthusiasm is infectious.

"I want them to be able to do everything really well, not one thing really, really perfect," Curtis said. "That's my philosophy of training dancers."

Students in The Core, the pre-professional company, take three days of ballet and jazz classes each week, along with classes with guests on the weekends. Gymnastics, stretch and tap are optional, but many students are eager to do it all.

Core dancers travel the East Coast to appear in competitions. Last July, the studio's senior girls company, featuring Debose and Marsh, finished second at the New York City Dance Alliance national finals. The two girls even took home a choreography award for "Off the Rails," a piece they created together.

Both Marsh and Debose will be back on television Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when this season's Top 20 "So You Think You Can Dance" competitors return to Hollywood and film the final live episodes.

'Holiday Wishes' show

Then Saturday at Cary Academy, Marsh, Debose and other studio alumni will perform in "Holiday Wishes," a benefit for the Make-a-Wish Foundation featuring 100 CC & Co. dancers and 10 performers from other Triangle arts groups.

"I'm really glad that I'll be home for that," said Marsh, who had squeezed in a trip between tapings for the TV show so she could return to the North Raleigh studio where she has trained for the past two years.

"So You Think You Can Dance" holds auditions across the country in which judges pick about 200 dancers to spend a week in Las Vegas learning choreography. The top 20 compete on the air, with two dancers eliminated each week, either by the judges or a phone-in vote.

Their secret: CC & Co.

Throughout the audition process, Marsh says she and Debose "kept it on the down low" that they trained at the same studio. The producers at Fox eventually figured it out, but filmed profile packages that painted Marsh as a small-town Southern belle and Debose as a farm girl from New Bern. Viewers never knew they knew each other.

But Curtis and her students certainly did.

Each Tuesday and Wednesday night this fall, the music at the studio stopped about 7:50 p.m. Still dressed for dance class, the students and teachers hurried to Milton's Pizza & Pasta.

Off went the football, on went "So You Think You Can Dance." It's a routine that began with Nichols' 2006 run.

No matter how trophies her students take home, Curtis exhorts them to remember that competitions are just another outlet for performing.

Prestigious alum returns

"Turning out dancers who can win competitions is exactly what Christy does not try to do," said Ashley Lindsey, a 2003 graduate of Enloe High School who is now a member of New York's prestigious Limón Dance Co.

Lindsey is also coming home to dance in "Holiday Wishes." He'll perform a solo and a number with the Defero Dance Collective, a new Raleigh professional company featuring former CC & Co. students.

What was so valuable about training with Curtis, Lindsey said, is that she hands her students over to guest teachers.

"We were constantly being exposed to outside choreographers," Lindsey said. "We spent long hours in rehearsal. It really prepared me for the real world of professional dance."

He spoke by phone last week just hours after returning from touring China with Limón. While he chose to work professionally as a modern dancer, others take more commercial career paths.

Nichols dances in a Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show. Debose plans to pursue an acting career. Just last week she got a callback to appear on "Law & Order." Curtis predicts, "She will end up famous in New York."

And Marsh? She'll soon embark on the "So You Think You Can Dance" national tour. Then it's back to Los Angeles for auditions. Odds are she'll have no problem finding work.

After her final performance on the show, judge Adam Shankman, producer of the Academy Awards and director of the movie "Hairspray," had this to say: "As a guy who hires a lot of people, let me tell you, Noelle, you are in the front of the line."