Words at Intermission: Kelli Youngman

“My parents, they were struggling to have kids and decided to adopt, and then in the midst of that they ended up getting pregnant with my sister Kristen…so I grew up one of seven kids, and was raised in a white, Roman Catholic family. I grew up in the suburbs and went to Catholic school.”

She also started taking dance classes. As soon as her mother realized that she had a natural aptitude for dance, Kelli was enrolled at a local studio that taught ballet, hip hop, and tap. By age nine, she was going to ballet camp every summer. And by the time she graduated high school—valedictorian of her class—she knew she wanted to be a performer.

“I thought I wanted to do a musical theatre program because I thought: ‘okay, I’m a good dancer; I need to work on my voice and my acting—my weaknesses’ and I applied mostly to musical theatre schools and didn’t get in anywhere.

“Ailey was the only dance school I applied to and I got in, and I remember getting the letter and opening it and being like, ‘okay, I guess that’s good’ but I didn’t realize how prestigious that program still was, and that it was so great that I got in, so it kind of felt like , ‘okay, I guess I’m gonna do that.’”

She’s talking about the esteemed Ailey School at Fordham University. Located in New York City, the program is the official dance school of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Alumni have gone on to join Broadway shows and acclaimed international dance companies; they’ve become Cirque du Soleil performers and Radio City Rockettes. It’s a great school, and Kelli almost chose not to go.

“My senior year of high school, I had a meniscectomy on my knee,” she says. “On top of that, my younger brother got diagnosed with cancer. So I was like, ‘am I gonna go to college now? Maybe I should take a year off’ and my parents were adamant: ‘no, you got into this program—you need to go.’

“But I wasn’t ever confident enough to be like, ‘this is what I’m doing—I believe that I can be in the Ailey company.’ I would go in and out of being heavily focused and committed and then just being completely overwhelmed by everything else that was going on in my life.”

Toward the end of her time at Ailey, Kelli was dropped from a lift during an audition; she broke her toe and had to forfeit any chance of being cast in that semester’s pieces—including one that had been earmarked for her. Luckily, the choreographer made her an understudy, and her toe healed in time for her to perform in the piece.

“After I graduated, I ended up moving back home for a year. I was teaching and trying to audition for all these companies, and that didn’t pan out. And I was like, ‘okay, maybe I’m just not good enough to be in a dance company.’ So for a couple of years I was going to musical theatre auditions because I didn’t know what else I should do, but not really booking anything there, not really committing to the dance world—just teetering.”

Her luck changed when she got a job with Norwegian Cruise Line, performing in a couple of their onboard musical productions. The employment gave her a renewed sense of confidence, and she returned to New York ready to give it another go. She quickly secured an agent and hit the auditions.

“I had been in for The King and I a few times and I didn’t get it. So I started working out and I started going to dance classes. Even if I worked at the restaurant, no matter what, every Wednesday I got up and went to [King and I associate choreographer] Greg Zane’s ballet class. And during that time, other people I knew were booking King and I, booking this or that, but I remember being like, ‘I’m just gonna keep going.’

 “Around the holidays, I was working at a restaurant at the time—I put my notice in, and I told them, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t work here anymore.’ They were like, ‘oh, did you book something?’ and I was like, ‘yeah! I’m gonna be on Broadway!’ and they were like, ‘what show?’ and I was like, “…well, I don’t know yet, but I’m supposed to be on Broadway by the end of the year!’

“So New Year’s came and went, and there was this moment of ‘okay…am I stupid for thinking this?’

“I ended up finding out the second week of January that I was going to be making my Broadway debut.”

Kelli made her Broadway debut in The King and I. Originally only hired for ten performances, she was eventually asked to provide coverage when other cast members went on vacation or medical leave; she ended up staying with the show until it closed.

“I was so honored to be there…it was so magical. On a personal level, it was the first time I’d ever been around that many Asian people—and Asian performers! And it was a huge moment for me to come to accept myself as an Asian woman. Because for so much of my life I had been around white people and been living a very white perspective and I didn’t even realize it—I did, but I didn’t. I didn’t accept myself and see my beauty for who I was as an Asian woman until I did that show.”

When The King and I went on tour the following year, Kelli was hired to be a swing and assistant dance captain. For anybody unacquainted with the terms, a swing is an understudy for the entire ensemble—when somebody goes out, the swing goes in—and a dance captain is a member of the cast designated by the choreographer to help maintain the integrity of the choreography throughout the run of the show. So not only was Kelli prepared to go on for any of the women in the ensemble, but she also helped run rehearsals and teach incoming cast members anything they needed to know.

With a Broadway credit and a touring leadership role on her resume, Kelli quickly found herself in demand. She left The King and I to join Anastasia on Broadway and was with the show for a year; soon after that, she went to Hartford Stage to perform in the world premiere of The Flamingo Kid. Almost immediately after, she went to Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., where she’d play a newspaper vendor in Disney’s Newsies.

“That process was so special to me,” she says, “and I learned so much from working with Molly Smith, the director, and Parker Esse; that whole team was just incredible. It was the first time I was being expected to show up as an artist in a different way. I had a one-on-one [meeting] with a text coach to talk about what my perspective was and where this was coming from. I hadn’t approached acting work like that since my high school acting class. I learned so much and I was so challenged—physically, artistically—it’s something that I’ll carry with me forever.”

When the pandemic hit, Kelli had just come back from Newsies and was auditioning in New York. She’d been cast in a production of 42nd Street at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which would have started rehearsals in April had everything gone according to plan.

Nothing’s gone according to plan this year, but with a combination of grit, confidence, and optimism, Kelli’s making the most of the situation.

“I wasn’t moving from my apartment, I ended up gaining so much weight—I was at the heaviest I’ve ever been, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna do something about this. I’ve gotta remember that, at some point, our careers are gonna be coming back.’ And so I went on this health journey for myself. I was uncovering a lot of things for myself and shedding all of these old beliefs about what it meant to take care of myself, and I got the idea to become a nutrition coach.

“As performers, our relationships with our bodies are so intricate, because they’re our vessels, our tools—especially as dancers. So much is based on our physical look, and it can get really complicated. In college I was told: ‘you need to lose seven pounds.’ I had no idea what that meant; the only way I knew how to do that was by starving myself or going on these crash diets. I didn’t know how to take care of myself in terms of nutrition, I didn’t know how to take care of my mindset, I didn’t know how to take care of my money, all these things.

“So I ended up starting LIGHT as a community for performers, and women, and people, who are trying to find a better approach to wellness that doesn’t involve crazy dieting. I’m working with one-on-one clients, and I’m creating a course called the Performer’s Plan that I’m going to be launching in January. As of now it’s a four-week course that I’m doing to promote wellness in your mind, body and money to create the career you desire,” she says with a smile, proud of the work she’s put into her new business.

“There are days when I’m at the computer six or seven hours, building this from the bottom up, but I’m trying to enjoy the process, because when am I gonna look back and say, ‘wow, I created a business during a pandemic?’”

Given that the American theatre industry is having its worst year in history, Kelli’s fortunate to have been able to find something else to work on. But it hasn’t come without costs: her unemployment claim ran out a few weeks ago and she’s been forced to start dipping into retirement savings.

“I feel like, in general, I tend to lean toward the positive aspects of things, but if I’m being—I hate even talking about this—if I’m being real, yeah, it is scary. Right now, my unemployment ended, and luckily [my partner] Steve has his benefits, but if the government doesn’t help, and this business doesn’t take off, well then, Steve doesn’t have benefits, I don’t have benefits—what exactly do we do then?

“I think that a lot of people don’t realize how many people are involved in this gigantic industry. It’s not just the performers—it’s the stagehands, it’s the costumers, it’s the people who service the building. The arts are just as valuable as any other sector. The belief that I grew up with for a long time was that the arts are something frivolous. And that’s the thing that I want people to understand: having a career in the arts is not just for fun. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication. We’ve invested our entire lives to get here, to this point, to be working in this industry.

“And it’s so integral in our community. Especially in a pandemic—everyone is turning to the arts for comfort, to cope with this scenario. If everyone could just remember that the arts are just as equal, in their own way, to the hotel industry, the airline industry, the whatever industry. The arts is a whole industry in itself, and I don’t think that right now it’s being treated as such.”

Even in the face of scary times, Kelli’s staying positive.

“Our industry is going to come back. It is. It undoubtedly will come back—it’s just a matter of staying ready for that moment, and also finding ways to be happy now. Because even though this is not our ideal situation, there are ways to make the most out of it. And again, so many performers that have worked for so long—when’s the last time you got the time like this with your families, or your friends, or to pursue other interests? Even though the industry is on hold, our lives are not on hold. Our happiness is not on hold.” ↓