Alex Ko Read online

  Dedication

  You taught me how to walk, ride my bike, catch fish, and most of all to Believe. . . .

  This is for you, Dad.

  I love you.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: How I Almost Never Learned to Dance

  Chapter 2: Missteps

  Chapter 3: My Return to Dance

  Chapter 4: The Diagnosis

  Chapter 5: The Transplant

  Chapter 6: The Ride

  Chapter 7: The Conversation

  Chapter 8: A Beginning, and an End

  Chapter 9: Travels with My Dad

  Chapter 10: Lost and Found

  Chapter 11: The Dance

  Chapter 12: So Close

  Chapter 13: My First Step to Broadway

  Chapter 14: The Audition

  Chapter 15: Callbacks

  Chapter 16: Callbacks, Part 2

  Chapter 17: The Biggest Surprise of My Life

  Chapter 18: Like Flying

  Chapter 19: Falling Down and Getting Up

  Chapter 20: In and Out

  Chapter 21: Broken Dream

  Chapter 22: Giving Back

  Chapter 23: Father Figure

  Chapter 24: My Return

  Chapter 25: Inspired

  Chapter 26: The Hard Side of Celebrity

  Chapter 27: The End

  Alex Ko’s Photo Album

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  It wasn’t until the stage manager yelled “thirty minutes” that it really hit me: I was about to star in a Broadway show. Right outside my dressing room door, fifteen hundred people were waiting. I was thirteen years old and I’d spent my whole life in Iowa, so the idea of performing for an audience that size was surreal. I could barely believe it was happening.

  Maybe I should have been scared, but mostly I was excited (and a little nervous). I was playing the lead in Billy Elliot, a musical about a poor British boy who desperately wants to be a ballet dancer. It’s a great show, and if you haven’t seen it, you should definitely rent the movie.

  As I practiced my lines in my head, I thought about how much I had in common with Billy. We were almost the exact same age, we’d both lost one of our parents, and we both loved dancing. In fact, I took my first dance class when I was four, which I guess is weird for a boy. But my older brother had taken tap lessons, and I wanted to be just like him. And guess what.

  I hated it.

  Even though I loved dancing, I hated the way everyone stared at me as the new kid. I wouldn’t dance at all—I wouldn’t even stand up! I sat on my hands for the entire class, and I refused to go back. Thankfully, I got over that.

  While the orchestra tuned up and the audience found their seats, I waited in my dressing room on the second floor of the Imperial Theatre, the same place where Les Misérables, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Boy from Oz were staged. It’s hard not to feel humble when you’re sharing a stage with the echoes of some of the biggest names in show business, like Ben Vereen and Hugh Jackman. Legends were made in this theater. The more I thought about it, the more I worried: what if I forgot a line or tripped? Fifteen hundred people, including just about everyone I knew in the whole world, would be watching. I was going to be singing music written by Elton John! I had to be perfect. I sat on my hands to keep myself from fidgeting and tried to run my lines. Stephen Daldry, the show’s director, had me rehearse all day in order to keep me distracted. But now I was alone, and I could hear the crowd gathering. A chorus of worries was singing in my head. I turned on my iPod and put on Lady Gaga to drown them out.

  Over the music, I heard a knock on the door.

  “Almost ready?” said Jess, my dresser, as she peeked her head in.

  I nodded, relieved to see her. Without Jess Scoblick, I would never have been able to do the show. I wore so many outfits and had to change between them so fast, there was no way I could do it all on my own. Sometimes I had only a few seconds to switch from one costume to the next. For my first scene, I had to wear three outfits one on top of the other so I could do really quick changes. Jess helped me pull on boxing shorts, then put pajamas on over the shorts, and then put track pants and a jacket over all of that. It was like being a little kid bundled up for a snowstorm—except that I had to be able to dance while wearing all of it!

  Jess was the best dresser anyone could ever have. She took care of me and became a great friend. During rehearsals, she was always boosting my spirits and helping me feel confident.

  “You’re gonna be great,” she said as she fixed the collar on my jacket and straightened my shirt. Her long dark hair framed her almost-always-smiling face.

  “Thanks,” I said. Somewhere in the distance, a loudspeaker announced our fifteen-minute call. Jess left, but before the door could close, Stephen, the director, came in. He was tall and gray-haired, with a British accent that I tried to mimic when I played Billy.

  “There’s one more thing you need to do,” he said, and took me downstairs. I couldn’t imagine what it was. Could there be any part of the play I hadn’t already rehearsed earlier that day? But Stephen had become like a godfather to me, so I knew if there was something he wanted me to do, it was for a good reason.

  Backstage was a whirl of crew and scenery and costumes. It’s incredible how many people it takes to run a Broadway show. Tonight was extra busy because there were two of us making our debuts—me and Kate Hennig, the actor who played my dance teacher. It was nice having someone else around who was still learning the ropes, but it made opening night all the more chaotic. Stephen and I had to dodge around people on our way down to the main stage. And the whole time, I couldn’t take my eyes off the heavy red velvet curtain that separated us from the audience. Very, very soon, it would go up, and the show would begin. I would be on Broadway!

  “Told you I’d find him,” Stephen said as he opened the stage door and let my mom in. He winked at me and hurried off.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you before the show!” I said as Mom hugged me. She smelled like home, which right then seemed very far away.

  My mom is one of the most amazing people I know. I wouldn’t even be a dancer, let alone on Broadway, if not for her. But one of the best things about her is that she isn’t a “stage mom.” She’s not one of those parents who hover around their kids at every audition, pampering them and driving everyone else crazy. She trusts me to be responsible. So I was surprised that she came by—surprised, and really happy.

  “I told you I’d come by before you went on,” she said. She smiled and fixed my hair. “I didn’t know if they’d let me in, but Stephen made it happen. You’re going to be great tonight. I love you.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I hugged her again, and she ran back to find her seat before the curtain went up. Seeing her gave me the boost I needed to get over my nerves. Now I just wanted to go out onstage. There were only a few minutes before the show started, and everyone was taking their places. I hurried to find my mark.

  But suddenly I heard Stephen talking to the audience. For some reason, he was out in front of that heavy velvet curtain giving a speech. That’s definitely not the way the show usually starts, so I strained my ears and listened.

  “He is without question one of the greatest dancers in the country,” I heard Stephen say. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about me! In fact, he said great things about everyone in the cast, especially Kate and me (since we were new). I just hoped I could live up to his words.

  When he was finished, the audience applauded and then hushed. After a long time (or maybe two more minutes—I couldn’t tell), the show finally started. O
ne by one, the members of the ensemble filed past me. I heard “break a leg” as they went, dark silhouettes dis-appearing onto the bright stage one after another.

  When the moment came for my grand Broadway entrance, I lowered my head, took a deep breath, and got dragged onto the stage. That’s right: my first time on Broadway and someone was already dragging me around!

  In my first scene, my “dad” is upset and he pulls me out onto the stage with him. I was supposed to stare at the ground while he yelled. But I couldn’t help myself: I broke character and peeked. Who wouldn’t? This was my moment. I wanted to remember every detail: the way the audience looked, how the lights felt on my skin, the scratchy floor sliding beneath me. I tried to be as subtle as I could without missing a thing.

  The view from the stage is strange, just a lot of indistinct shadows and bright lights. I wanted to look at the whole theater, but I could only move my head so far without anyone noticing. But there in the front row was Eloy Barragan, one of my ballet teachers. As though I needed more pressure! My eyes searched the audience, looking for other familiar faces, but I found none. For all I could tell, the theater was filled with cardboard cutouts.

  Then I saw the lined face of the tall, gray-haired conductor, and it hit me.

  Whoa, I thought. This is real.

  I don’t know why seeing the conductor made me realize that. Maybe it’s because in normal life you only see the back of the conductor’s head. But seeing his face let me know that I wasn’t dreaming. It was October 6, 2009, and in a few seconds I’d say my first line in a real Broadway show. I tried to prepare myself. I thought of my family in the audience, all the people who loved me but couldn’t be there, and God. Then I took a deep breath, opened my mouth, and said: “It’s to do with Maggie Thatcher, isn’t it?”

  The next thing I knew, the show was over and the audience was giving me a standing ovation. That’s how it is for me when I’m onstage. I would never say that being a performer is easy. It’s one of the hardest things I can imagine doing. But all the work happens offstage, in classes, rehearsals, and auditions. For every hour of performing, there are weeks—sometimes even months—of preparation. And it can be really hard work, filled with long hours, bad injuries, and endless repetition. But when you’re onstage, you never let that show. You relax and just . . . be. At least, that’s what I do. That night, I was Billy Elliot—and it was great.

  Seeing all those people stand up and applaud was amazing, especially because my mom, and my brothers, John and Matt, were there. In fact, almost my entire extended family had come to see the show, along with half of Iowa (or at least it felt that way). Even my great-grandma was there, and she never traveled on a plane.

  Originally, I hadn’t wanted my family to come to my first performance, because I always worry the most about what they think. I wanted to be perfect by the time they saw the show. But once the performance was over, I couldn’t wait to see them.

  I wished my dad could have been there. He had died two years earlier, when I was eleven. Billy lost his mom when he was ten. But he still talks to his mom all the time, the same way I do with my dad. Every night before I go to bed, I tell him everything that’s happened that day. Tonight, I would have lots to say.

  Like Billy’s dad, my father had a hard time with me being a dancer. He didn’t think it was serious, and he wanted me to focus on more respectable things, like becoming a doctor. But when I showed him how much I loved it, he became the most supportive father you could imagine. In fact, he’s the one who pushed me toward ballet. Though I wished he could have been there that night, I knew he had the best seat in the house, up in heaven.

  After my final bow, the curtain closed for good—but the applause didn’t stop. The whole cast and crew of the show were applauding for Kate and me, because it was our first night. Jess and Stephen both swept me up in congratulatory hugs. From the stagehands to the ballet girls, everyone was excited to see us do well. There was a giant circle of people around me applauding. I looked around the room and thought, I want to do this forever.

  Little did I know that eight days later I would be out of the show, and possibly never dance again.

  I guess I should start at the beginning. . . .

  Chapter 1

  How I Almost Never Learned to Dance

  The first stage I ever performed on was the hardwood floor of my family’s living room in Iowa City, Iowa. I was a four-year-old dance prodigy, choreographing elaborate shows with a full orchestra, an army of backup dancers, and an audience of thousands.

  Okay, I’d never taken a dance class, the orchestra was on tape, my only backup dancer was my dog Ming Ming, and the “audience” was my family. But as my bare feet slid across our living room floor in uncoordinated attempts at pirouettes and handsprings, I felt like a star. This was what I was born to do.

  No, not dance in my living room. Perform. I never dreamed that I would make it as far as I have, but I always knew I’d be a dancer, no matter what. It was just in me, in my blood, from the moment I was born.

  I used to spend all day getting ready for my “shows.” My dad, Sam Ko, was born in Hong Kong, which meant he had a nifty British accent and a lot of CDs and DVDs of Chinese pop songs (it also makes me Chinese American, since my mom, Tammie, is from Florida). Whenever we went to Chicago, Dad would go to Chinatown to buy music. On the way back home, I’d sit in the back of the car and listen to those out-of-this-world sounds. When we got home, I obsessively watched the DVDs, which were filled with kaleidoscopic colors and beautiful women in neon dance clubs. They were like nothing I ever saw on TV in Iowa City. We didn’t even have cable, let alone videos from around the world. They were my escape from our normal suburban life, into a world of excitement and magic—the world of theater, where anything was possible.

  Maybe that sounds childish, but it’s exactly what I thought when I was four: that theater could take me out of this world and into a whole new one. Or into a dozen new ones. Or a million.

  And I was right.

  I loved those songs, even though I couldn’t understand a word of Chinese. Maybe, actually, that’s why I loved them. Nothing got in the way of feeling the music. I would close my eyes and move, without caring what I looked like. There’s that old saying “dance as though no one’s watching,” and that’s what I did every day. Sometimes I would imagine a perfect world—not anything in particular, but the feeling of being somewhere free and perfect and wonderful. I would try to move in a way that expressed how I felt. I would leap and flip and jump, hop and step and kick. I’d mimic the dancers and gymnasts I saw on TV, long before I actually knew how to do any of the moves.

  Mom says that I was “energetic” and “creative” (which is mom-speak for “wild” and “stubborn”). Dancing was a great way for me to get all of my energy out without constantly being in her way.

  Not that performing in the living room was particularly “out of the way.” Sometimes, if I was really going crazy, Dad would chase me around the house with a rolled-up newspaper, and I would run from him, laughing. “You’re going to be a top surgeon,” he would say when he caught me. He’d carefully take my hands and tell me that they were the “hands of great surgeon!” But then he’d soften up. “But if you really want, maybe an actor,” he’d add. “The next Robert De Niro, that’s you.” He would smile wide and shake his head with pride.

  “I always knew you were going to do important things with your life,” Mom says now. Not because I danced all the time, though I did, but because of what I did afterward. I made her tape all of my shows, and when I finished performing, I sat in my room and studied the tapes over and over again. I needed to know what I could do better. I analyzed every step, every kick, every turn. I wanted to be perfect, because even then I knew that’s what it took to be an actor, or a dancer, or any kind of artist.

  It’s embarrassing to watch those tapes now and see my bowl-cut hair flying and my arms flailing. If you saw me then, you’d be really surprised I ever made it to Broadway
. But there’s no way you could miss the giant smile on my face. I loved dancing, and I always have.

  “Alex!” Dad would say when I’d spent too many hours poring over the videos trying to improve my footwork. “Come on—we’re going for a bike ride.”

  Dad and I used to bike everywhere: up and down Teg Drive, the quiet suburban street we lived on; out to the University of Iowa, where I would stare at the white stone buildings and dream about going to college; or my favorite, over to the nearby reservoir, where we would go fishing. Together with my older brother, John, and our younger brother, Matt, we’d spend long summer afternoons on the banks. Fishing was just an excuse to hang out. We’d wrestle and fight and swim. On the way home, I’d stand on the back of John’s bike and feel the wind rushing all around me. It felt like flying.

  I spent a lot of time with my brothers and my dad when I was little. Dad took care of the house, while Mom worked for the ACT, that test that high school seniors take to get into college. My mom’s really smart. Like, for-real smart. She has a PhD in applied statistics and psychometrics, which basically means math. Really hard math.

  It’s probably weird to some people that my dad stayed home while my mom worked. But it was the right thing for our family. It showed me from an early age that what mattered most was doing what was right for you, not what anyone else said was right. It was a lesson that really helped during the long years when I was the only boy in any of my dance classes. If you’re a guy, and you want to dance, be prepared. Most of the time, you’ll be the only one. But you’ll always stand out, and for a performer, that’s a good thing.

  I was lucky—not many people in our neighborhood judged us in any way. Iowa City was a great, open-minded place to grow up, and our neighborhood had a real community feel. People were accepting of all kinds of different folks.

  Dad did lots of things around the house (he even built the speakers I used for my shows), but he was an especially great cook. Before I was born, his family owned a Chinese restaurant in Iowa City. In fact, that’s where he met my mom. In 1993, the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers both flooded, leaving thirty thousand square miles of the country underwater. It was one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit America. My dad was living in California, but he came to Iowa to help his sisters get their restaurant back together after the flood nearly destroyed it. My mom just happened to work there. It sounds like the plot of a musical, doesn’t it? A big disaster, a new boss with an exotic accent, and a beautiful girl who was waiting tables to pay for college. It’s no wonder Dad loved to cook after that!