Enchanted Dancers

On November 21, 2007 Walt Disney Pictures is releasing for Thanksgiving, the movie "Enchanted" in what is being called the movie event of the year.

It begins in an animated fairy tale world where a young girl meets and falls in love with the handsome prince of her dreams. News of this romance upsets the prince's mother, the evil queen, who uses her black magic to send the girl hurtling out of the animated world into the one place in the universe where there is no true love: modern day Manhattan. The now-real girl has to survive in New York City and find her way home again to her true love.

The cast includes, Patrick Dempsey (yes ladies, Dr. McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy), Amy Adams (The Princess), Susan Sarandon (The Evil Queen), James Marsden (The Prince) and Idina Menzel.

One of the turning points in the movie is a Grand Costume Ball scene that just happens to include many local dancers from the Long Island and NY City area. Some of the names you may recognize of the 70 plus dancers setting the atmosphere in the ballroom are, U.S Ballroom Champions Bill Davies, Bonnie Herbert Diaz, and Richard Diaz. Also dancing are Kelvin Roche, Lorianne Greenhouse, Donamarie Portelli, Michelle Officer, Patrick Taverna, Kathleen Banovich, Lou Brockman, Heather Gehring, Soloman Singer, Angel Garcia, Mayte Vicens, and myself, Chuck Fetta.

I have to credit Donamarie Portelli for dragging me and my dancing shoes out of the basement and dusting me off for the audition. Having not done any Viennese Waltz in over 20 years, I was a bit apprehensive especially given the fact that she was calling me at 4pm on a Wed. afternoon for a 10am Thursday morning NYC audition. Two weeks later we were on set rehearsing and filming for about nine days with some of them being 16 hours long.One morning was finished up about 4am having been in costume since 11am the day before but not before an impromtu dance party broke out with live music from the orchestra backing up Idina Menzel who some of you may know from "Rent". All in all an absolute great experience.

Enchanted will mix the old with the new. It will bring us back to what Disney is best known for, the fairytale and the 2D animation that created them. Throw in modern day New York, a bit of real life, and you can see why they are calling this the movie event of the year. No expense was spared and Enchanted should go down as one of Disney's all time best family films.