It Keeps Her On Her Toes

With her beauty and dramatic style, Amanda Schull is capturing the admiration of fans outside the usual ballet circles

Wednesday - August 18, 2005
By Alice Keesing
E-mail this story | Print this page | Archive | RSS |

Del.icio.us

And easy it is not, the trio exclaim.

The 26-year-old Schull has been dancing for as long as she can remember. One of her first performance memories is as a cake-bearer in Nutcracker when she was just 3 or 4 years old.

Amanda Schull and Joan Boada
rehearse for the upcoming production
of ‘Coppelia’

Landovsky remembers Schull as a feisty individual and, ah, Amanda, he says there was a little bit of a lazy streak in those early years. That all changed, however, he says, after she went to a competition in Mississippi that is like the Olympics of the ballet world. Then she saw what ballet could be and got serious.

After attending Indiana University, Schull won a place with the San Francisco Ballet in 1999. It was there that a Hollywood scout spotted her and knew he’d found the lead female star for Center Stage.

Schull’s star quality shone through on the big screen — particularly in her memorable redtutu’ed finale — and the film earned her quite a following. Schull is touched by the young dancers who tell her she is their inspiration. And she is amused — if not slightly bemused — by the Internet fan sites, including those two tennis-playing Romeos.

The prospect of a film career obviously lingers. Schull has been offered other roles, although she’s not sure if she has what she calls the Hollywood “hunger.” She’s also tossing up the possibility of broadcast journalism and has been finishing up her degree via correspondence.

But for now, her dance career still comes first.

“I’d like to dance as long as it’s still fun,” she says.

There is a romantic view of a dancer’s life — the glamour of performing and the weeks spent on tour in places like Paris — but it’s demanding work.

“It’s tough,” Schull says. “You wake up in the morning and have to get to work early to stretch and … take class and rehearse and then we perform, and sometimes I don’t get home until 11:30 or 12 at night and then I have to ice, I have to sew my shoes, I have to take a hot bath. I have to do all of that, and then you wake up in what seems like way too few hours later and start all over again.”

And the physical demands are intense. Schull recently had cortisone injections in her spine to help her recovery from a back injury. And the battering that a dancer’s feet can take is obvious as Schull meticulously applies the Second Skin and bandages to her toes before she dons her pointe shoes.

“A lot of the time out on the stage we are in pain and we aren’t allowed to show that to the audience,” she says.

Her time off comes a couple of times a year when she returns home to Hawaii. This summer her entire family is together in town, and Schull says she’s spending a lot of time playing “soccer mom” with her nieces and nephews. They’re hitting the beach and Schull is sharing her new passion for beading with her niece.

Amanda Schull and Joan Boada work with ‘Coppelia’
cast dancers

Even her black poodle Rupert is here, happily trotting around the studio as Schull rehearses.

“I really love San Francisco, it’s a beautiful city, but every time I step off a plane here,” she says, “I exhale, I relax.”

Ballet Hawaii’s Coppelia will be at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on Aug. 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Aug. 21 at 2 p.m.

Tickets are available at the Blaisdell Box Office and all Ticketmaster locations, including Times. They are priced at $25, $40 and $55, with discounts available for students, senior citizens and military. To charge-byphone, call toll free at 1-877- 750-4400 or log on to www.ticketmaster.com. For group sales information, call Ballet Hawaii at 521-8600.

Page 2 of 2 pages for this story < 1 2