Kelley is the son of Hill District native Toni Jones
Dance is a part of Scott Kelley’s DNA. The Los Angeles-based performer grew up around the graceful bodies of dancers.
“I was raised in the dance studio. My mom used to take me there with her. I began dancing at 3 years old and I began to take it seriously at age 9 or 10,” explained Kelley, 23, whose mother, Hill District native Toni Jones, graduated from Point Park University in the ‘80s with a dance degree. Jones moved to Los Angeles and earned her Master’s in the discipline from the University of California-Irvine.
So when Kelley was hand-picked by legendary interdisciplinary artist and Point Park University graduate Tome Cousin to perform in Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse production of “The Scottsboro Boys,” which Cousin directed and choreographed, he knew he boogied into something that would profoundly change his life and the way he viewed it.
“I got a text from my mother saying there was an opportunity to perform in Pittsburgh,” recalled Kelley, who portrayed Andy Wright, the oldest of two brothers who receives 99 years in jail. “My mom had been telling him about me and me about him and he said he wanted to put me in a production. Tome never met me until the first day of rehearsal but there was a sense of family and unity even though everyone else in the cast are from Point Park. He was looking for someone who could sing, dance and act all in one. He took a risk on me. He saw something in me that I didn’t see. He knew who to cast in which roles and he knew I could bring something to this show.”
“I am extremely proud of him,” gushed Kelley’s mother, Toni Jones. “When he was born I wanted a girl because Scott has an older brother, so when I got two boys I was like, OK. I never tried to put them into dance but they went to the dance studio with me and he just took to it. Ever since he started taking this seriously he would study everything about what he was going to do. He loves to do research on why people do what they do.”
“The Scottsboro Boys,” which ran at the Raugh Theatre here in Pittsburgh from Sept 8-24, tells the horrific tale of nine Black boys who were accused of raping two White women while aboard a train bound for Alabama in 1931. Although no evidence of the rape was found, the nine youths were convicted and all but one, a 12-year-old, were sentenced to death. The case depicted a harsh light on the denial of Blacks on juries and the unjust treatment of African Americans during that time period.
“The show parallels what we’re going through today with race relations. America needs to accept its wrongs and admit them,” said Kelley, who graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a film degree. “It’s scary to know that something like that could happen today to any of us. At any moment law enforcement could look at us and take away our human rights. Black males are being slaughtered and police officers are getting off on paid leave like we don’t matter.”
Kelley felt a sense of kinship and brotherhood with the other Black men in the cast. Something he hadn’t felt before and didn’t know he craved (he grew up in all-White or mostly Asian schools) until he experienced it.
“I was closed off, standoffish, but Tome opened me up. This is the first show where it’s all Black men in the cast and there’s something so powerful about that. The first two weeks to three weeks of rehearsal I noticed I was standoffish because I didn’t know how to communicate with my own people. This is one of the most important pieces of work I’ve done,” Kelley said.
After cutting his dance teeth at the studio with his mother, Kelley auditioned for his school’s dance team, on a dare. The year he joined the team, it won first place in every competition it competed in.
“I said, ‘Oh I’m good at something.’ I was the only boy. Sports didn’t interest me; I’m small and didn’t like getting hurt so I stuck with the dance thing and began mimicking Michael Jackson’s moves and I was at this party, and I was dancing like Michael Jackson and someone from the Universal Dance Designs Studio was there and saw me dance. They asked me to audition for the owner of the studio to play a young Michael Jackson,” he said.
The studio is where dancer Savion Glover and the grandsons of the famous tap dancing Nicholas Brothers learned to tap dance and taught all of the Jacksons how to tap.
Kelley performed for studio owner Arlene Kennedy and was cast in the role of a young Michael Jackson.
“Michael Jackson actually got the chance to see Scott perform. It was during the time that Michael was on trial for the molestation and he wasn’t able to be in the room with children at that time but he did watch through a monitor and saw Scott do Smooth Criminal,” Jones said.
For the next five years Kelley was a member of the studio and learned alongside the Nicholas Brothers’ grandsons the fundamentals of tap dancing and other forms of the discipline.
“I was the worst student but I didn’t know I was with legends. I was about 10 years old and I just wanted to have fun. But I was being seen as a dancer and that was my motivation. The Kennedys exposed me to making a living out of it,” Kelley said.
His years under the Kennedys’ tutelage prepared him for roles in such musicals as “Chicago,” Hairspray,” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” In 2013, he landed a role as an American dancer in Germany’s “Magic of the Dance.” He spent two to four months in the winter and one to two months in the summer performing in the show. He will be returning to perform in the show later this year.
Next year he plans on returning to Pittsburgh, which he affectionately calls his second home because he spent several weeks here during his childhood summers with his maternal grandparents to teach a class on the North Side.
“The role in ‘The Scottsboro Boys’ made me fearless,” Kelley said. “I realized I have this gift that I need to share on my own terms. I realized that all of this is in me and if I don’t push myself I’d be doing my ancestors a disservice.”
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