As an 8-year-old bumblebee in the production “Wicked,” Alexi Fernandez fell in love with the stage.
“I was so inspired as I watched the older performers. That’s when my dream of being on Broadway began,” she said.
Today, Fernandez is doing her best to make that dream come true. Now 18, Fernandez is a student at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in New York City where she is studying music and dance.
“It’s wonderful!” Fernandez says of the experience that began just a few weeks ago. And busy.
To track her down, Fernandez gave two options.
“I have 30 minutes on Monday, or I’m free from 2:30 to 4:30 on Thursday,” she said.
So, sandwiched in-between a class in musical theater history and a hip-hop dance class, Fernandez recounted how she landed in the Big Apple.
It began as a child at local dance studios under the tutelage of Jesse Cooper and then Chelsea Lea and strong support of dance instructor Megan Weber of Yates Center.
Clearly a standout student with a serious passion, Fernandez said “Miss Chelsea” advised her to further her technique in Kansas City.
With her family’s support, Fernandez began taking classes at the Kansas City Ballet Academy her freshman year.
“It was wonderful, but exhausting,” Fernandez said of the routine, which required thrice-weekly trips to Kansas City for a 1.5 hour ballet class.
“I did my homework in the car. And typically on weekends I performed at conventions. By Monday morning, I was exhausted,” she said.
For her senior year in high school she enrolled in a virtual school while devoting her life fulltime to dancing in Kansas City.
“I was dancing six days a week at the academy,” she said, adding that her family had temporarily moved there as well in support of the decision. Fernandez is the daughter of Jessica and Jamie Fernandez. Completing the family are two younger sisters, “who are into sports, not dancing,” Alexi Fernandez said.
ALL THE work paid off.
“Years of dancing and competing prepared me for the audition,” she said. “I spent all last summer practicing for my audition video,” which she submitted last October.
When Fernandez learned she had been accepted into the academy, it was tempered by the reality of its cost.
