Three high school seniors reprise the role of ‘Dreamgirls’ at The Kroc Center

Three seniors from Memphis-area high schools are creating a scene in Ballet On Wheels (BOW) Dance School & Company’s dance production of “Dreamgirls” at The Kroc Center on Saturday, June 4. Two shows are scheduled – a matinee at 2:30 p.m. and an evening show at 7 p.m.

 Kaiah Amira Warr (White Station High), Rheya Amani Traylor (Overton High), and Simone Alexandria Yates (Central High) are reprising the role of the fictional Detroit, Mich., girl group known as the Dream, which is based on the 1981 Broadway musical “Dreamgirls” and the 2006 film version starring Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé Knowles.

 “They are three young ambitious ladies who fit the role,” said Chauniece R. Thompson, BOW’s founder and executive artistic director, Memphis’ first non-profit, professional African-American ballet school and dance company.

Rheya Traylor (left) and Simone Yates are two of three high
school seniors reprising the role of 'Dreamgirls' at The Kroc
Center. (Courtesy photos)

“We want to make sure we are true to the theme and the dance styles in the movie and Broadway (version),” said Thompson. “The dance styles include ballet, modern dance, jazz, juking and hip-hop. And all the dancers are Memphians.”

 “You should come see Dreamgirls. It’s a great adaption of the old play and we’re just telling a great story,” said Warr, one of two lead dancers touting the production via video on the dance company’s website – balletonwheels.org.

Warr has danced since the age of five and started with BOW when she was six. She has studied ballet, hip-hop, modern, improv, contemporary, character and pointe. Her career highlights include performing as “Dorothy” in “The Wiz” in 2012, as the “Scarecrow” in 2013, and played the firefly character “Ray” in the “Princess and the Frog.” Her parents are Kevin and Shelah Warr.

Yates, the second lead dancer, said, “The music is great. The dancing is great. Everything is great about Dreamgirls.” She has danced with BOW since she was 16 years old and studied ballet, African, hip-hop, modern, improv, contemporary and pointe.

Yates is a member of BOW’s Senior Company. Her dance credits include a role in “Charlotte” in the 2014 version of “The Princess & the Frog.” Her parents are Stephen and Lydia Yates.

Performances include several
dance styles such as ballet, modern
dance, jazz, juking and hip-hop.

Traylor has been dancing for 10 years. She enjoys modern dance, but ballet is her favorite genre of dance. She played “Aunt Em” in “The Wiz” in 2013 and “Louis” in “Princess and the Frog” in 2014.

Thompson is one of six choreographers who created dance steps for the production. “It’s a phenomenal show,” she said, noting that period-based costumes will be worn by the dancers to add flavor and authenticity.  

“It’s a never-before-seen dance production,” said Thompson, who worked on the production for about 3 ½ months. “It’s a show the Memphis community will definitely want to experience.”

“Dreamgirls” is BOW’s end-season production. The class schedule starts in September and ends June 2017. Summer dance camp for beginners is now underway. Children 3 – 18 can join.

 For more information about “Dreamgirls,” or to purchase tickets online, contact Ballet On Wheels at (901) 870-4348 or visit: www.balletonwheels.org.

Spa operator moving forward after leasing fiasco

Vincent Gardley works with Willis Harris, a regular at Gardley's French Riviera
Spa in the Whitehaven Plaza shopping center. (Photo: Wiley Henry)

Vincent Gardley is vacillating between moving the French Riviera Spa he operates in the Whitehaven Plaza to the Southgate Shopping Center on Third Street or the Southland Mall Shopping Center on Shelby Drive. He’d rather stay put but that option is not on the table.

Gardley purchased the spa a year and a half ago from a Utah resident who owns 20 French Riviera Spas throughout the Southeast. That purchase did not make Gardley the leaseholder on the Whitehaven Plaza property. After learning of that and moving to explore his options, Gardley found out that the choices available at that point did not include him continuing to run his French Rivera Spa operation from the Whitehaven Plaza spot.

The bombshell created a predicament for Gardley: He’d increased the spa’s membership considerably within a relatively short time. Now he has to move and risk losing what he’d gained.

Southgate is 5.87 miles north of the spa’s current location and Southland is 1.20 miles south.

“I have two leases on my desk and I’m going to make a decision in a few weeks. So I have some options. I’m trying to decide which way to go,” said Gardley, who learned in April that he has to vacate the building at 4130 Elvis Presley Blvd. by October.

“We’re trying to keep it under $7,500 a month,” said Gardley, hoping the new location will keep the spa’s growing membership in tact as well as draw others. “We need about 9,000 square feet. We would love to have 11 or 12.”

The price has to be right, he said.

Relocating the spa would require transporting several elliptical machines, tread climbers, punching bags, upright cycling bikes, rowing machines, weight benches and other cardio exercise equipment. But Gardley doesn’t see this as a problem – just a setback.

“All we need is space and don’t require a huge build out – offices and stuff like that,” he said. “We can move in 10 days.”

Gardley purchased the spa from Ren Rice, who still is the leaseholder on the property.

“He did buy that business…but the lease that we have, Vincent is not even on it, said Rick Smith, director of property management with Finard Properties, which owns the Whitehaven Plaza. “So our dealings are with our leaseholder.”

A 10-year lease agreement for the spa is on file with Finard. But Smith would not divulge much information about the lease, citing landlord and tenant confidentially. He did say, however, that there are no options after the lease expires in October, meaning the lease will not be renewed.

“So what we did was we reached out to the person on the lease, the company on the lease,” said Smith, “and we told them…that you need to check your lease and its statements and requirements…the end of the term.”

Smith said he’d heard about “the potential sale (of the French Riviera Spa) through the grapevine” and notified Rice to tell him “y’all need to check this before you do anything. At that point, there was nothing more that we could do.”

Gardley called Smith in an attempt to renegotiate the lease.

“I was told that the people I bought the spa from were in violation of the lease by selling me the place,” said Gardley.

“When Vincent did reach out to me, I spoke with him as absolutely open curtain as I could,” said Smith. “But I still had some restrictions, because Vincent was not on the lease. And anytime that a business under a lease agreement has transactions, that has to be approved by the property owner.”

Gardley looked back on his conversation with Smith. “I said, ‘Oh, I wish somebody had told me this, that there was a problem.’ But, of course, they continued to take my money,” he said. “They kept taking a rent check from me with my name on it, with my company’s name on it.”

Smith said, “We don’t review every single payment that comes in in terms of whose checking account did that come from. They’re just going to mark it paid and credit it to the account down in the credit department. That’s no different than if I go and pay your light gas and water bill.”

Gardley is not dismayed, not even after learning that Finard is leasing the former Ike’s pharmacy at 4126 Elvis Presley to Planet Fitness, a national chain. Renovation has already begun and Planet Fitness should open around the time the lease comes to an end for French Riviera Spa, Smith said.

“We’ve been working on that lease for quite some time,” he said. “These things take six, 12 months, and even more to work out the economics…the construction…the lease agreement and the language therein.”

It is not customary for a landlord to pit two competing businesses against each other, Smith said. “Most likely, what will end up are two people who can’t pay their rent.”

Acknowledging that Gardley is in a bad spot, Smith said, “Vincent is a fine young man and he is a great operator. It’s a bad situation.”

Gardley has been forthright with his French Rivera Spa clients.

“Soon as I found out about this, I talked to the members and told them the lease won’t be renewed and that we would have to move,” said Gardley, who was upbeat in February when he talked to The New Tri-State Defender about his expansion plans for the Whitehaven location.

“We’re obligated by law to honor the lease agreement,” said Smith. “But it doesn’t change Vincent’s predicament. That’s the burden of the story.”

From trailer to center to 'home'

   

The Vance Avenue Youth Development Center attracts children from various
parts of Memphis. It's a home away from home for most of them, said Barbara
Ann Nesbit, the director. (Photos: Wiley Henry)

     Barbara Ann Nesbit feeds 150 children a day, six days a week – and senior citizens too – in a community tagged by poverty and blight and where many small businesses struggle to survive along the Vance Avenue corridor.

Nesbit runs one of those businesses at 670 Vance Ave., in a trailer housing the Vance Avenue Youth Development Center, which was organized and chartered in 1994 to serve at-risk youths in need of life survival skills.

Given the need, Nesbit would gladly serve even more youths, if she had the space and additional resources.

“Our rules say we can take them from (age) four to high school. But we got some 6-year-olds with 3-year-old brothers and sisters. They bring them over. So I can’t turn those children away,” said Nesbit, who treated youths, adults and a few Memphis police officers to a “salad and loaded potato luncheon” at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) facility at 280 Cynthia Place earlier this month.

The luncheon was an opportunity for Nesbit to thank her in-kind and monetary donors, including the crew that transformed the trailer into a thriving youth center. The VFW building is a short distance from the center. Nesbit made the return trip hand-in-hand with one of the little girls.

Surrounded by some of the children in the program, Nesbit
thanks supporters for their contributions during a recent luncheon
at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) facility.

 “I believe in these children. I know somebody had to reach out and help them,” said Nesbit, recalling the motivation to create the youth center when she was employed as a Shelby County Juvenile Court auxiliary probation officer from 1990 to 1997. She and a co-worker combined skills and resources to open the center. Soon after, the co-worker relinquished her role and responsibility to Nesbit, who became the center’s director.

“By me being an auxiliary probation officer – she was too – we knew how the system works,” she said. “These children are our future. And I was not going to give up.”

Her mother, sisters, brothers and husband, James Nesbit, made sacrifices and contributions to get the center up and running with very limited resources, said Nesbit, the eldest of seven children born in Hughes, Ark., and raised in Proctor, Ark., by a single mother “who worked three jobs to take care of her children.”

Drawing upon traits and life-lessons learned from her mother, Nesbit, who doesn’t have biological children, teaches the ones in her charge that giving and sharing are noble qualities.

“My mom would tell us, ‘If you want to share with your friends, go right ahead.’ That’s the way we were brought up,” said Nesbit.

The center, which received its 501(c)(3) tax exemption in 1998, is her life. She sacrifices to feed, educate, clothe and tend to the children’s personal needs, including counseling, if needed. She receives no salary and takes in just enough to keep the doors open.

Her immediate family, she said, initially detested the Vance Avenue location as a youth center, fearing for the safety of her and the children. She ignored their plea to retreat to safer ground.

“It’s bad everywhere,” said Nesbit. “But you see they couldn’t stop me. So they just blend in to help me. I don’t let nobody tell me what I can and cannot do unless I try it for myself.”

Each day the children return for food, fun, games, and programs and for help with their schoolwork.

“We started coming over here the first day,” said 15-year-old Keunna Morris, recalling her family’s move to the neighborhood in January 2013.

“They started telling us about it (the youth center) in school. So we would come over after school. Then I started coming over here every day,” said Morris, now a 10th grader at Booker T. Washington (BTW) High School,

Trinity Bradley, 12, has been a part of the Vance Avenue Youth Development Center’s program since the 4th grade. Now a 7th-grader at BTW Middle School, she said the lessons learned include “that it’s not good to hang around the wrong people. …

“I learned to stay focused and to stay out of trouble. (And) when we get confused about something, she (Nesbit) helps us until we get it.”

Taylor Gardner, 12, and her brother Trey Gardner, 10, confide in Nesbit and seek her help when they get stumped on a school project. A volunteer staff and teachers pitch in, making good use of two computer rooms.

“I get help with homework. I get tutoring. If I don’t have homework, she’ll make me study – like multiplication,” said Trey, a 5th grader at Westside Elementary School. He’s been part of the program for two years.

“I would be poor and wouldn’t have some of the things I need, like clothes, if it had not been for Mrs. Barbara,” he said.

Taylor said Nesbit’s giving extends to people on the street. “She feeds them breakfast, lunch and gives them snacks,” she said.

“I don’t leave anybody out,” said Nesbit, noting her Christian upbringing. “I’m not going to let nobody go hungry; I’m not going to let nobody go without clothes.”

And she keeps a ready supply of kind words. Demesha Bradley, a 5th-grader at LaRose Elementary School, is a witness.

“If you need somebody to talk to,” said the 11-year-old, “Mrs. Barbara is the one to talk to.”

(For more information about the Vance Avenue Youth Development Center or its director, Barbara Ann Nesbit, call 901-527-1145, email info@youthdevcenter.org or visit www.youthdevcenter.org.)

JROQSOL rocks The Dizzy Bird

Jay Smith, who goes by the stage name JROQSOL, wows family and friends at
The Dizzy Bird in Midtown on Sunday (April 3) evening. (Photos: Wiley Henry)

Local pop artist Jay Smith, who goes by the stage name JROQSOL, has a lot to be thankful for. He survived homelessness, bouncing from house to house, and struggled with a weight problem that crimped his vocal cords and caused deep-seated angst.

He’d fallen on hard times after his employer laid him off. Left to fend for himself, he couldn’t find enough work that would afford him a place to stay. He also was in school at the time and dropped out.

“It didn’t feel good,” said JROQSOL, who, despite having no place to call home, managed to compensate the people who wrested him from wretchedness and a life that could have taken even more of a turn for the worst.

Through it all, including losing 110 pounds, JROQSOL was determined to survive. He righted what was wrong in his life and now makes reference to some of those experiences on stage and via message-laden songs.

“I couldn’t tell stories if I hadn’t gone through some of that,” he told an intimate group of family and friends at The Dizzy Bird in Midtown on Sunday (April 3) evening for JROQSOL’s inaugural fan appreciation show, “#For The Survivors: The Take Off Edition.”

Singing a medley of pop and R & B songs, JROQSOL and his backup singers – Sequoia Gray, Kevin Pierre and Dillon Banbenhoek (who played guitar some) – stirred the crowd to hoot and clap.

JROQSOL unleashed three sets of songs, with intermission between each set for a get-to-know JROQSOL interview with the show’s announcer.

JROQSOL and his backup singers – Sequoria Gray, Kevin
Pierre and Dillon Banbenhoek – perform a medley of pop
and R&B songs.

Q: Describe your sound?

A: I love all types of music. Memphis is one of those cities where everybody can sing. … I’m a pop artist with an R & B edge to it. It’s me. It’s who I am.”

Between sets, several gift cards and “huge prizes” were given away to the audience for answering questions correctly about JROQSOL’s life, career and passions. At one point, the announcer asked, “How many people came to JROQSOL’s first show?”

 “Eight people!” someone blurted out about the 2012 show at The Renaissance in Midtown.

“I expected about 500 people, but only eight people showed up,” JROQSOL said. “And I still had to perform like it was packed to the brim. It was actually great training for me.”

Since then, JROQSOL has performed on stage six other times, “at least two shows a year,” he said, adding, “There really isn’t a big platform for pop artists the way that I do what I do.”

Sunday’s “Survivors” performance was “a fan appreciation show for everybody that supported me throughout the years,” he said.

The year 2012 was JROQSOL’s official launch as a pop artist. He’s been singing since childhood, he said, recalling keeping tune to a song on the radio when he was 4 years old.

“My aunt had heard me. She said, ‘Josh, cut the radio off.’ I cut it off but kept singing and she thought it was still the radio. So she kind of was the one who was like, ‘hey, you can sing.’”

Before he was JROQSOL, he was Jay Smith, a preacher’s kid growing up in the church. His father, Dr. Larry Smith, senior pastor of Empowerment of Faith Christian Church in East Memphis, was beholding to gospel music. Secular music was a no-no. 

“Absolutely no secular music was allowed in my home – unless you were with mama (Barbara Smith), who is divorced from his father – or snuck it in whenever you could,” said Smith.

At seven, Smith’s talent registered at Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ. “Actually, Bishop (G.E.) Patterson gave me my first solo,” Smith recalls. “I did ‘Talk it Over With Jesus’ with my grade-school class at Bountiful Blessings Christian Academy).”

Smith started his own group at 17, which placed him on a trajectory in gospel music. He sang primarily at his father’s church, where he was “praise and worship leader, youth choir director, everything that a preacher’s child does, I did.”

It was the late gospel legend Daryl Coley who overwhelmed Smith and took him to school with his music and musicianship.

“Daryl Coley is one of the few singers that I can say is the reason why I started singing in the first place,” said Smith. “He made it cool for you to have range and his ear was impeccable.”

Smith got a shot with Andrew Knox and New Change, a local community choir. He sang background on the group’s first album. He also sang and recorded “Be With Me” with Donald Walker and Company.

From group to group, Smith plied his vocal skills – in the background. Then he came to an intersection in his career. He wanted to make a switch to pop music, change his persona, and take the lead.

“I knew I was supposed to do something solo. I prayed about it,” said Smith, who consulted his godfather, Bishop Gerald Coleman Sr., senior pastor of Faith Keepers Ministries in the Raleigh/Frayser community.

“He told me to stick with God, listen to God’s voice, and that I should be fine,” said Smith.

Following that course, Smith came upon a green light that led him to make the move to the next phase of his life as JROQSOL.