Paschal Senior Tyler Phillips Accepted to Prestigious Dance Program at Juilliard
It’s not every day that a toddler discovers his life’s passion, but Tyler Phillips watched his older sister’s dance recital and was smitten. His mother quickly realized Tyler was not going to leave her alone until she allowed him to take dance lessons. “He wanted to know when he could go to dance class,” Margaret Phillips says. “By the summer, I had a two-and-a-half-year-old who was absolutely livid that he couldn’t start dance class because they didn’t begin until September.”
Now, Tyler is anxiously awaiting the start of another dance program, one of the most prestigious in the world. The Paschal High School senior was accepted last month into The Juilliard School in New York. The rigorous four-year B.F.A. dance program admits only 12 males and 12 females each year. “I knew I had my work cut out for me,” Tyler says. “But I wanted to go there more than I had wanted anything in my life so far. So, of course, I decided to audition.”
Tyler was among more than 400 people who auditioned for the program this year in various cities across the country. The four-step audition, which Tyler attended in Houston in February, included modern dance and ballet classes, a solo performance, a coached repertory sequence, and an informal interview. Cuts were made after each round. Those who remained after the interview were considered finalists for the program. “After my interview, I was done,” Tyler says. “There was absolutely nothing I could do but wait.”
It was the longest wait of Tyler’s life. He was not sure he would make the cut, despite his many achievements in dance. When he was eight years old, he landed a role in Debbie Allen’s Pepito’s Story through Imagination Celebration Fort Worth. One of the youngest members of the cast, Tyler worked with professional male dancers and began to see a career in dance as a real possibility. “That was huge – that he got to see guys who danced. And [some of the lead dancers in Pepito’s Story] came out to Alice Carlson to visit his second grade class, so he was pretty cool that week,” his mother says with a laugh.
Other prominent dance roles followed, including performances in the Nutcracker and for the Metropolitan Classical Ballet in Arlington at Bass Hall. Since middle school, Tyler has trained with industry professionals at the EDGE Performing Arts Center dance program in Los Angeles. The program’s calendar always threatened to interrupt Tyler’s school schedule, but his mother says administrators at each of his Fort Worth ISD schools worked with the family to help Tyler continue developing his talent.
In his sophomore year, Tyler began studying at the Dance Continuum studio in Hurst. “The studio introduced me to concert dance,” he says. “I had always thought I would move out to L.A. and pursue commercial work. But after learning about the concert dance world and the countless opportunities, I fell in love.” Tyler trains at Dance Continuum at least four evenings a week, a commute of more than 40 miles round-trip from his Fort Worth home.
But back in March, when not dancing or sitting in class at Paschal, Tyler checked his email – and waited. Juilliard officials had said they would notify finalists between March 15th and April 1st. Days passed. On March 23rd, Tyler was shopping for a washing machine with his parents when his cell phone rang. It was Juilliard’s admissions coordinator calling to tell Tyler, who held his breath in the aisle at Home Depot, he had been accepted. “I never felt anything like it in my entire life,” Tyler says. “To this day, I still have little sparks of realization.”
Of the two dozen students entering Juilliard’s dance program this fall, Tyler is one of the few public school students. The group has been communicating informally via Facebook to get to know each other before classes begin. “I’m determined to soak up every last piece of wisdom offered at Juilliard and use it to make my professional dreams come true,” says Tyler. “There are so many amazing opportunities offered at the school and I believe it will open so many doors for me.” That singular passion is something his mother knows well. “The only thing that Tyler ever wanted to do was dance, “she says. “That’s what he wanted to do then, and he’s never lost focus.”