by Alex Ko
“Can I pet him?” I said.
“No,” the dog walker replied. “Really, no one’s supposed to touch him.”
Bo looked up at us, his intelligent eyes begging us to stroke his fluffy head. He was a Portuguese water dog, and looked exactly like a curly-haired stuffed animal. How could we resist?
“Please?” said Liam.
The man looked around quickly, but we were alone aside from the security guard, who seemed bored now that it was clear we weren’t pint-size spies.
“All right,” the walker said. “But just once.”
I’m happy to report that Bo Obama is a great first dog: cute, smart, friendly, and very, very fluffy. I wish I could have gotten a picture with him, but even petting him seemed to make his handler nervous. I wanted to get out before he made the security guard escort us back to the East Room.
“Thanks!” I said over my shoulder as I pulled Liam away from the dog and out of the room. “Where to now?” I whispered.
Liam shrugged. The dance program would be starting soon. I almost suggested we head back when I spotted another open door.
“Let’s just look,” I said. I darted down the hall and peeked my head in.
The room had two big, heavy red armchairs sitting atop a thick Oriental rug. There were a couple of ornate wooden desks and armoires, as well as the antique paintings that seemed to be required decor for every room in the White House. I guess after forty-four presidents and first families, you end up with a lot of portraits. But what caught my eye was an open cabinet built into one wall. I couldn’t tell what was inside it, exactly, but it looked like thin sheets of metal stacked vertically.
“Whoa . . . cool. What is that?” I wondered.
“I don’t know,” Liam said as he poked his head in next to mine. “But I know how to find out!”
Quick as a flash, Liam was in the room and tugging on one of the sheets.
“Careful!” I whispered as I ran over to help him. Slowly, we tugged it out of the cabinet to reveal a giant map of Asia that was intricately detailed. When fully unrolled, it hung in front of the cabinet with a little stand to keep it in place. It was metal only on the outer edge—the rest was a sort of heavy canvas.
“Cool,” said Liam. “The president has the best toys.”
“It’s one of the perks of being president,” I agreed. “Like Air Force One and the right to skip every line at Disneyland.”
There were dozens of other maps in the cabinet, and I wanted to pull each one out and examine it. I could just picture the president meeting foreign ambassadors in this room to discuss trade agreements and national security issues. I shivered. I couldn’t believe how awesome my life had become. I, Alex Ko from Iowa City, was an invited guest at the White House, exploring the president’s stuff. For the first time, I actually felt famous.
“What do you think’s in there?” Liam asked, pointing to the only other door in the Map Room.
I shrugged and went to open it.
“Sweet,” I said. Liam started to run over.
“Hold up!” I yelled as I slipped into the room and closed the door behind me. “It’s just the bathroom.”
I’d needed one for a while. After I washed my hands, I checked the time on my phone. It was after noon, and the workshop was starting soon. It was time for Liam and me to head back. But as I wiped my hands, I noticed something strange about the paper towels: they had the White House seal emblazoned on them. I took a few as souvenirs.
“Catch,” I said as I stepped out of the room and lobbed a pile of towels at Liam.
“Ew!” he said. “What did you do that for?”
“Souvenir,” I told him. “Look at them. Closely.”
I slipped more into my bag as Liam started laughing.
“Awesome! Thanks, Alex.”
“No problem,” I said. “But we should get back.”
“Think they’ve noticed we’re missing?”
“If Juliana had noticed, I don’t think we’d be missing anymore,” I replied. I was surprised we’d managed to stay free for this long. Management was usually pretty strict at events like this, but we’d gotten lucky. When we slipped back into the East Room, it was clear that no one had even noticed we were gone. If it hadn’t been for the paper towels in my bag (which I still have, to this day, as a souvenir on my bookshelf), it all might never have happened.
“Alex, Liam, Dayton, Jacob!” Juliana called our names from the other side of the East Room. “We’re going to get started soon, but first there’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Juliana led us into the hallway. Right away, I noticed that the farther we went, the more security there was. I felt a tingle of expectation run down my spine. This could mean only one thing. . . .
Finally, we reached a door guarded by four Secret Service agents. There were other dancers already waiting. We joined them in line, and security ushered us in. There, in the center of the room, was the first lady, Michelle Obama!
“Welcome,” she said as we entered.
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe I was meeting the first lady of the United States of America. I also couldn’t believe how tall she was. I mean, she had to be at least six feet. At least. And that wasn’t counting her shoes.
“Remember,” Juliana whispered, “don’t say anything unless she talks to you first.”
The guards kept us in line, and one by one, the first lady shook hands with us. As she came closer to me, my heart started pounding. I’d been nervous about meeting famous people before, but never like this. Celebrities do cool things like star in movies and write books, but the first lady actually helped decide how our entire country was run. Hers was a whole new level of power and fame, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually meeting her. Soon she was three people away in line. Then two. Then there was just one person between the first lady and me.
Then she turned to take my hand.
“Oh my gosh, you’re tall,” I blurted out.
“Alex!” Juliana shushed me, embarrassed.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just said. I clapped my hand over my mouth.
Luckily, the first lady laughed.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s the heels.” She winked at me, shook my hand, and moved down the line.
Soon after that, the workshop started and I found myself leading a hundred kids through “Solidarity,” a big ballet number that intercuts scenes of Billy in dance class with his father and brother fighting armed guards at the mines. I felt doubly blessed. I was both giving back to the community and meeting some of my heroes at the same time. I could barely believe my luck.
After the lesson, a tiny girl in tights came up to me, her black ponytail shaking with nerves.
“Excuse me?” she said, in a voice just one step above a whisper.
“Hi there,” I said, shaking her hand. “I’m Alex. Did you enjoy the workshop?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know you. I mean, I saw you on Broadway. Can . . . can . . . can I have your autograph?” Shyly, she held out a pen and notepad.
“My autograph?” I asked, surprised. “Sure, of course.”
I was in a room with Michelle Obama, Judith Jamison, and at least a dozen other famous dancers, and this girl was asking for my autograph. Kenny’s words about the places I would go came back to me then, and I realized he was right. I wanted to tell each of these kids to keep dancing, keep trying, because you never knew where life would take you. In fact, I wanted to ask this girl for her autograph, because if I could come from Iowa City and end up leading a workshop at the White House, who knew where she would go. Maybe one day I’d be watching her dance, or taking a workshop from her, or shaking her hand as the first lady of America.
Or as the president.
If there is anything that being Billy taught me about life it’s this: you never know what will happen next. Chance leads to coincidence, which breeds opportunity, and allows for victory. A loss precedes a gain, failure creates room for success. At some point, every
single one of us in the White House was just a child, dreaming big. Like me. Like Billy. Like the little girl.
“I’m going to be up on that stage someday,” she said, after I signed her notepad. The look of determination on her face was one I knew well. I’d seen it in the mirror every day my whole life.
“Keep dreaming,” I told her, “and you will.”
Chapter 26
The Hard Side of Celebrity
After I got home from the White House, I raced to post the photos Liam and I had taken. Because my family and friends were so spread out, I was a huge Facebook user. I loved seeing what my teachers in Iowa were up to and reading comments from my family in California and Las Vegas. But now that I’d been in Billy Elliot for a while, I was getting more and more friend requests from people I didn’t know. I felt weird rejecting them, because they were all so nice. But it was also strange to accept their requests, because I didn’t know any of them.
At first, I said yes to everyone. They were reaching out in kindness, and I wanted to do the same. But it wasn’t long before things got . . . weird. Most of the fans I met on Facebook were wonderful people doing amazing things with their lives, and I loved hearing their thoughts on the show. Some of them, however, had a hard time telling the difference between seeing me in Billy Elliot and being my friend in real life. Maybe they were lonely, or confused, or sick, I don’t know. I think it’s part of our obsession with famous people. We get so used to being able to read about them in magazines, or see photos, that fans come to expect things, and can get upset when those expectations aren’t met. And some of them take it too far.
The first comment on my White House photos appeared only a few seconds after I posted them. It was from a man I’d never met, who lived in New York and had seen the show at least a dozen times. I know because he messaged me after every performance he attended.
Great photos!!!!!! he wrote. Coming 2 my party this wknd???? U never answered my invite.
My stomach flip-flopped. He’d been inviting me to parties, shows, and other events for weeks. Each time, I felt more uncomfortable. At first, they’d just been mass Facebook invites, but when I ignored those, he sent me individual messages. When I didn’t respond to the messages, he started posting on my wall. Now he was commenting on everything I did, demanding a response.
Who is this guy? I thought. He made me feel really weird, and he wasn’t the only one. Another fan had taken photos of me onstage and sent them, anonymously, to Mom at her job. The photos were pretty and maybe he meant it as a nice gesture, but it made me feel watched. A third guy had posted that I was his “real son” and he was going to “come get me.” It was probably a joke, but it wasn’t one I was comfortable with. But at least those guys commented and disappeared. This guy kept coming back, and each time he was more insistent.
“Mom?” I called out to the other room. “Will you look at something?”
“What is it, Alex?” she asked.
“This Facebook stuff. I don’t know, it’s making me feel weird. Read this.”
I showed Mom the comments and messages. She read them in silence, but I could tell from her furrowed forehead that she was upset.
“Alex, you should have shown me this before,” she said. “This is not okay. I don’t you want to talk to him anymore.”
“I never have,” I told her. “He just keeps messaging me.”
“Then you should block him, sweetie,” Mom said, scrolling through all his invitations. “I don’t like this one bit.”
That was exactly what I was hoping she would say. A few clicks of the mouse later and he was out of my life forever.
Or so I thought. . . .
After the end of the show the next night, I left the theater by the stage door, as usual. There were always a few dozen audience members camped outside waiting for autographs. I loved meeting fans and signing their Playbills. It was one of my favorite parts of being in the show. But that night I didn’t get to sign a single one.
At the front of the line was a large man with a scowl on his face. As soon as I left the stage door, he started calling my name.
“Alex!” he said loudly. “Alex! Why’d you block me? I just want to be your friend, man. What gives?”
My heart stopped. This was the creeper from Facebook. I didn’t know what to do.
“I . . . I didn’t block you,” I stammered. There was just a thin rope separating us, and even though there was a security guard nearby, I could easily imagine this guy leaping right over it. My guardian had stepped back inside, but he had already called a cab and I could see it idling across the street. There was a long line of people waiting to meet me, but I couldn’t stay, not with this guy here.
“I’m not on Facebook much,” I lied. “In fact, I’m deleting it. I didn’t block you. I have to go!” I yelled over my shoulder as I raced into the cab. My heart didn’t stop pounding until the door was locked behind me and the taxi was gliding into traffic on Eighth Avenue. That night, I deleted my Facebook profile and began to understand the hard parts of being a celebrity.
Hands down, I can’t imagine a better job than being in Billy Elliot. But there were problems too, and the longer I was in the show, the more apparent they became.
The biggest one was the most difficult to do anything about. I was performing three or four times a week. Even though I was in near-peak condition, that kind of repetitive stress takes a physical toll. I developed a long list of minor injuries, starting with my knees. Dr. Hamilton had been right: I had Osgood-Schlatter disease, and no matter how much stretching and strengthening I did, there were nights when the repetition of the same moves over and over again was too much for me. I’d learned my lesson, and there was no more trying to push through, but that meant I had to miss more performances.
But even worse than the physical stuff was the mental monotony. When I wasn’t in the show, I was rehearsing it, or talking about it in an interview, or doing a scene from it for a charity event. Technically, I was with the Broadway company longer than any other Billy. For two years, everything I did in life revolved around the same three hours of singing and dancing. Back in Iowa, if anyone had told me the day would come when I found being on Broadway at all boring or routine, I’d have laughed. But after a while, even the best music in the world starts to sound repetitive. There were times when I felt like I was in that Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, living the same day over and over again on a loop. I looked for ways to make the show feel new again, because I knew if I lost interest, I’d never give the audience the fully committed performance they deserved. I had to find a solution, so I called Stephen, which recently I’d been doing more and more often. The closer the end of my time in the show came, the more Stephen came to be a support figure for me.
When I was first injured, Mom and I were frustrated that he never sat us down and told us what would happen to me. But as the weeks went on, we realized there was no way he could do this. There was no time line for my knee, and though the show was doing well, you never knew when things might change. In fact, all the principal contracts had to be re-signed every six months, which is pretty standard on Broadway.
Now he was already working on his next project, the film adaptation of the best-selling book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and Billy Elliot was going strong—on Broadway and elsewhere. To date, the show had toured twice, and had productions in New York, London, Sydney, Chicago, Toronto, and Seoul. It was impossible to expect Stephen to pay personal attention to me, one Billy from one of many productions.
And yet somehow he did. Not long after the White House event, Mom called me one afternoon during tutoring.
“Stephen just called,” she said.
“Is someone sick?” I asked. “Does he need me to go on tomorrow?”
“He wants to get dinner,” she continued.
“Tonight? I’ll be home in a few hours.”
“No,” Mom said. “I mean, he was actually asking me for a meeting. I think he wants to check up on you.”
That unexpected call was the beginning of a close friendship between Stephen and our family. He didn’t just make time to deal with me, as part of the show, he made time to interact with me as a person, to get to know Mom, Matt, and John, and to look out for us. We didn’t see him a lot, because he was rarely in New York, and when he was, he was there on business. But from then on, we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would do what he could for us. There were still no guarantees, but it helped quiet the feeling of panic I had inside me. It also meant that we could turn to him with questions. As I began to explore what I would do next, Stephen became my guide. So when I felt I was starting to age out of the show, he was the first person I turned to.
Thankfully, he had dealt with this issue before.
“You’re getting older now, Alex,” he told me one evening after he’d seen a random performance. “We should change the way you do some of the scenes. I’m going to have you work with Mark on aging up the part.”
I thought Mark Schneider, the new resident director, would just give me new directions, but instead, he helped me figure out what it meant to portray Billy as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old instead of an eleven-year-old. It was this kind of attention to detail that made Billy Elliot the huge Broadway hit it became.
“It’s all about the intention,” Mark told me. “You know how to play Billy at eleven. Now just be the same kid two years later.”
This changed the show in subtle but powerful ways. For instance, there’s a scene where Billy yells at Mrs. Wilkinson, his dance teacher. Always before, I’d done it like a kid throwing a temper tantrum, but Mark had me tone down the performance so I sounded more like an adult having an argument. It made the show more complex, and deeper emotionally.
Little changes like that helped me continue to fit the part even though I was entering puberty. They also helped keep up my interest. Sometimes, though, I tried to change things on my own, and that never worked out well.
The truth was, I was beginning to worry about my voice. Every singer cracks occasionally, even on Broadway, but soon after the White House event, I started breaking more and more. Some of the big, exciting numbers at the end of Act II were slowly slipping out of my range. David Chase, the show’s musical director, rewrote them one by one, bringing down notes, modifying sections, and in some cases, changing the key of the song entirely.
