Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
Some music artists begin performing as children and
never stop. But not all former child stars are
successful performers as adults.
Julian Lage has been playing the guitar since he was
five-years old. Now, he is twenty-one.
JULIAN LAGE: I certainly felt it was no effort to
play the guitar. It was fun, it was really fun."
A film called Jules at Eight explores what life for
Julian Lage was like when people began to understand
the skills he had.
He says his parents rejected offers to send him
across the country and appear on television. They
believed that such offers were not in his best
interest.
That may be why Julian Lage did not release his
first collection of recordings until last March.
JULIAN LAGE: I could have recorded when I was
younger, but the biggest issue for me was wanting to
step forward with more than just the music.
Music critics say Lage has an unusual sound. That
quality is probably why we are still hearing about
him.
Psychologist Ellen Winner says moving from child
star to adult performer is difficult.
ELLEN WINNER: Most of them are unheard of when they
grow up to be adults.
Winner wrote a book called, Gifted Children: Myths
and Realities.
She says a child prodigy is a boy or girl who
becomes skilled in an area that adults invented. The
child also becomes skilled in that area very
quickly. If you want to remain famous, she says, you
have to do something in a new way.
Rasta Thomas is doing that with his company, Bad
Boys of Dance. They performed this summer at the
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts,
near Washington, D.C. Terrence Jones is a top
official with the arts center.
He says Thomas is exciting to watch and has
widespread appeal. He says his music and dancing
bring a new and younger crowd to dance performances.
Thomas was called a child prodigy. At the age of
fourteen, he won a famous dance competition. Later,
he added moves from modern dance, jazz, musical
theater and even Michael Jackson.
Thomas says he wanted to change ballet from an art
form only for a selected few. He says he thought
about having younger, fresher dancers and making the
performances more fun.
Rasta and his wife, also a former child prodigy, add
playfulness and humor to their dances. Their shows
are a big success with both young and old. Im Faith
Lapidus.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
