Dancer Elly Rebeka loves the athleticism dancing requires but yet is always smiling during the two-hour show in Pigeon Forge. (Array Photo)
Elly Rebeka had done a magic show in the Pigeon Forge area for a few months in 2021 that gave her a taste of life in the Great Smoky Mountains. So it was not just coming on “blind faith” like she had for some contracts when the dancer moved here two years ago to be part of the variety show “Array” at Mountain of Entertainment Theater.
“I love the mountains and I love nature. Chicago’s very different from here but that’s kind of one of the things that I enjoy. It is very touristy and there’s a lot of things to do, but you also get kind of the nature and the small town feel of it as well. It’s not a big city,” said Rebeka before a recent performance.
“I have worked in a lot of other places. I’ve lived in a lot of different places around the country through dancing. I moved here last year in March for this show and also for the (Jason Huey) magic show that’s here during the afternoons that I am in as well. I do a couple of tricks in the magic show.”
Rebeka knows there are a lot of show choices in the Pigeon Forge area but believes Array is the most unique.
“All of the dinner shows are really incredible entertainment and they all offer something unique. But I think here you get such a broad variety as the name suggests. You get to see a quick change act and you get to see really highly skilled dancers and incredible vocalists. You get a little bit of everything and every genre, which is something that no other show in this town offers,” she said.
“You can just kind of have fun watching the show. It’s a really feel good show. A lot of our songs are really upbeat and you can connect with the slower songs as well. It’s a very high energy two-hour show.”
Question: Do you have an athletic background to be able to perform the variety of dances you do each show?
Rebeka: “No not really. I’ve been dancing since I was three years old. Similar to a sport. I was doing dance training after school or I was doing theater and dance classes afterwards. So it was similar to an extracurricular (activity) in that I was dancing every night instead of playing tennis or playing golf or whatever. But it is a very athletic profession for sure.”
Question: Did you ever try any sports or were you so involved with dancing you did not?
Rebeka: “I briefly tried volleyball for about four months. It was an intramural program. But for the most part, I’ve been busy with dancing.”
Question: What drew you to dancing?
Rebeka: “I like the athleticism of it. I’ve been called an endorphin junkie. For dance, what I appreciate is that it’s artistic as well as athletic. So there’s that element of storytelling and it’s more free than playing a sport. But you still get the athleticism and the physicality. Like you’re playing a sport with a bit more artistry involved as well.”
Question: “So do you run three miles a day or do something special to stay in such great shape or does rehearsing and the show keep you in shape to do what you do?
Rebeka: “The show keeps me in shape. I do cross train a bit. I’ll do yoga or pilates as well. But we’re here six nights a week and we are very physically active for those two hours. Even when we’re off stage, we’re usually changing costumes. So there’s very few rest periods during a show. My whole life I’ve been training to reach a professional level of dance. There are years of behind the scenes training and learning the technique and learning the terminology and preparing your body to operate at such a high level for so long.”
Question: How many times do you change costumes during a show because it seems like a lot?
Rebeka: “I’ve tried to count and I’ve forgotten and lost count. At Christmas we counted one time. I think we had 18 costume changes in our Christmas show. That Christmas show was a lot more costume heavy. So we were basically changing backstage, the whole show. This show now for the main season we have 14 different costumes.”
Question: How do you keep your focus on what you’ve got coming up and what you’re going to do when you have so many costume changes?
Rebeka: “It’s definitely a mental game. When we first open the show and the show content is new, or even now, I will put all of my costumes in the order that I’m wearing them. So I literally just go left to right, like I’m reading and I’m like, ‘Oh, this costume is next.’ So that way it’s one less thing to think about, but it is a lot especially when you’re first opening a new show. It’s a brain game to remember what you’re doing
Question: So what does a lead assistant in a magic show do?
Rebeka: “I kind of fell into it by accident. The very first contract that I was working as a dancer, it was a song and dance show, but then we were also doing illusions and magic and it was the singers and dancers performing the illusions. And from there, I met a couple of magicians and I’ve done some other magic shows. I’ve worked with Jason Hudy touring as well. When they were opening Array here, they also invited Jason to come and do his show. So I just do a little bit of everything.”
Question: Do you ever rest?
Rebeka: “Fortunately we have Sundays off but it is a very busy schedule, especially when I’m doing the magic show. I’ll be doing two shows a day, six days a week. I’m very fortunate that we have a position called a swing. It’s very common in theater to have someone else outside the main cast that knows the role. So for magic I have a swing. Once or twice a week, she’ll come in and do the magic show for me. That way I get a day off.
Question: Did you really major in French at Ball State?
Rebeka: “When I was younger I started speaking French in the public school system and I really fell in love with the language. We had classes and stuff starting in middle school and then I continued with it through high school. I liked it a lot. Ballet terminology is usually in French, so I found that speaking French and also dancing and doing ballet there was a direct correlation there. When I went to college, I wanted to keep speaking it so I decided to get a minor. Turned out that I only needed to take a couple more classes and I had a major.
“One of the theme parks I worked at was in New Hampshire, so it was very close to the Canadian border. It was actually really cool that we would get French Canadian guests coming into the park and I was able to speak French with them a little bit. Some days I kicked myself that I didn’t learn Spanish, but French is just a very fun language. And for me, I really like learning languages. So it was just a natural thing to keep learning that.”
Question: Did you just know you’re always just gonna be a dancer or did you want to be a singer/ dancer or actor/dancer?
Rebeka: “It’s kind of it’s such a broad profession, but you can choose different paths to go. Dancing has always been the first and foremost for me. It’s the thing that I started with. Again, I really love the athleticism of it and being able to express myself through dance is really unique. I do also sing and growing up I did musical theater. I’ve been a singer/dancer as well. Doing both is hard. Just your breathing as a dancer versus your breathing as a singer is very different and comes from different places. So then when you’re doing both at the same time, you kind of have to figure out where to breathe. It’s a skill for sure.”
Question: Does the staff get along as well as it appears based on the smile on stage during the show?
Rebeka: “This is a group that really likes each other, especially this year’s cast. I think everyone is very close knit. Theater in general as a profession I think is very different because for most people you come in and you do your nine to five, you talk with your co-workers and you’re friendly and then you go home. But in theater it’s so much of our life as well. Our cast becomes our friends. We spend time with each other outside the show and we all really bond doing a show and you build friends in a cast for sure.”
Question: Do you eventually find a show/location where you get comfortable and consider staying or do you like to change locations every few years?
Rebeka: “That’s definitely one of the unique things about this profession as well. I know performers, both here in Pigeon Forge, in Myrtle Beach, in Chicago, that find the place that they want to live and they build their profession and they’re performing opportunities around that. And then there’s people, which I usually fall into the other category, where if I get a job in Hawaii, all right, I’m gonna go. I just kind of follow the job and I think that’s one of the fun things for me is that depending on the show, depending on where I want to be, I can just kind of hop around and get to see so many parts of the country that I never would be able to otherwise.
“I think being a dancer is very unique, but then there’s also magic shows throughout the country as well. There’s plenty of singing opportunities. So there’s a lot of different things that I could do to just take me around the country.”
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For more information on Array (2135 Parkway Pigeon Forge, TN 37863) call (865) 245-4386 or visit https://www.mountainofentertainmenttheater.com/.
