Duo team up for winning routine
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE Madison Miller and Alexa Varga love to dance.
And they have an award to prove it.
The two girls, ages 9 and 13, respectively, won a first-place Future Star award (junior division) and a special, I Love to Dance award during the three-day, Dancers Inc. dance competition held April 7 to 9 in Atlantic City.
And while their duet a lighthearted interpretation of Cole Porter’s rather dark-hearted "Miss Otis Regrets (She’s Unable to Lunch Today)" clearly struck the Dancers Inc. judges as remarkable, what’s more remarkable is that the two girls had never previously performed together in public.
"I was just so nervous when I was up there," Alexa said Tuesday afternoon during a break from rehearsal at Absolute Dance Co. on Spotswood-Englishtown Road. "But all I was looking at was Madison and she was just smiling so big that that was all that mattered."
"I was very nervous backstage," Madison said.
"You couldn’t tell," Alexa responded with a laugh.
Indeed, in speaking with Madison, one gets the impression that the word "nervous" is one that is rarely if ever applied to the Jamesburg fourth-grader, a precocious bundle of energy whose confidence and instantaneous ease with almost everyone she meets belies the fact that she is autistic.
"Madison is a very special girl," Nicole Lee, owner and artistic director of Absolute Dance, said last week. "She has more energy and love of performing than almost any other student I’ve had."
Ms. Lee said it was that energy and love of performing that won the judges over in April and inspired Alexa, a 10-year veteran of the dance school, to ask to perform a special duet with the younger girl last September. Though she has been dancing at the school for six years, Madison had never before had a dominant role in the competitive dance routines.
"She’s just so enthusiastic and fun, that I really felt like I wanted to do this with her this season," said Alexa, who is also the eighth-grade Student Council president at Applegarth Middle School.
That enthusiasm is visible in even the briefest glimpse of the duo’s take on "Miss Otis Regrets," in which Alexa takes the role of Miss Otis’ housekeeper and Madison the role of the friend in the unenviable position of learning from said housekeeper that Miss Otis has just been strung up by an angry mob after shooting her cheating husband.
While she is four years younger and several inches shorter than her partner, Madison dominates the floor, exploding in reaction to the news, relayed with delicacy through Alexa’s graceful moves.
The two girls will perform the number at four more competitive events this season (which ends in August) and also during a fundraiser Wednesday at the Clearbrook Cultural Center benefiting the Deborah Hospital Foundation.
And after that?
"I don’t know," Alexa said. "I definitely want to keep dancing."
"Yes," Madison agreed. "I love to dance."

