Ellie Potts Barrett, Dance `76, recently received the 2nd Annual Central Florida Dance Award presented by the University of Central Florida Conservatory Theater. On April 24, she debuted Barrettwerks, a program showcasing her diverse choreography, including 12-minute dramatic dance based on the story of Opal Petty, a Texas woman who was committed to a mental institution for 51 years for dancing against the wishes of her fundamentalist family. Also on the program were Cantata Sonata, Yet Another Tango and Two for Tutu. The performances were held in the Johnny Holloway Theatre at the Harwood-Watson Dance Studio in Orlando.
Barrett, who grew up in Central Florida, lives in St. Augustine with husband Ken Barrett, a photographer, and is also on the faculty of Flagler College in St. Augustine and the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. She returns to teach weekly at the School of Performing Arts in Fern Park.
She works in both modern dance and commercial and musical theater -- a fitting split for someone who studied modern dance at the Boston Conservatory of Music in the 1970s, but left to play Mary Magdalene in the first national tour of "Jesus Christ, Superstar." She later finished her dance degree at the USF.
She co-founded Central Florida's first modern dance troupe in the 1980s, created dance sequences for Disney World and SeaWorld, and choreographed productions of "Grease," "Urinetown" and "Rent" in Seoul, South Korea. Her first feature-film choreography credit was for the 2006 John Travolta-Salma Hayek movie "Lonely Hearts," filmed in the St. Augustine area.
In her quest to flesh out Opal's story, Barrett sought out the cousins -- Linda and Clint Kauffman -- who helped free her, and spoke with Linda just weeks before her dance was to premiere. Opal was since passed away. As a result of that contact and with the Texas Civil Rights Project, which supported a lawsuit to free Opal, she said the dancers have been invited to present the dance piece at the Project's Bill of Rights dinner next fall.