Youth shine in city of Broadway performers
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NEW YORK CITY — A stage hand for the Radio City Music Hall spoke more truth than he knew after watching the first dress rehearsal of the youth jubilee on June 12.
It was only several hours before show time and the effervescent cast of more than 2,400 teens, the largest cast to ever play at the Radio City Music Hall, had never been on stage together.
The stage hand, well aware of the time professionals need to polish their performance, feared the complexities of this jubilee were too great for untrained performers.
"These guys are getting by on faith," he said in a tone of derision.
How true.
Little did he know, the entire jubilee — from conception to performance — was an act of mountain-moving faith.
President Gordon B. Hinckley, in his quest to make the Church fun for the youth, has asked that youth participate in a cultural arts program to celebrate temple dedications. Youth in the Manhattan New York Temple district followed the lead of their peers in Alaska, Ghana and Denmark who performed prior to dedications in their areas.
In less than three months, youth from across the temple district rallied around their leaders and learned their parts. The challenge, as Scott Smith and Rob Ostler of the Plainview New York Stake found, was that their routines changed each rehearsal.
"I missed one rehearsal and came back to find the routine changed so much that I didn't recognize it," said Scott, who, with Rob, plans to leave on his mission in a few months.
Still, the effort was worth the sacrifice. As they performed their Irish dance their faces beamed the excitement of performing for President Hinckley and a capacity audience on the historic stage of the famed Radio City Music Hall.
The jubilee, dubbed "A Standard to the Nations," was a two-hour performance of song and dance that briefly highlighted the history of the Church in New York, and acknowledged the cosmopolitan mix of ethnic members in the Church.
The jubilee was divided into six segments with 30-second video clips between segments featuring youth bearing their testimonies and comments from three members of the Quorum of the Twelve who lived or worked in New York. Elder L. Tom Perry, Elder Robert D. Hales and Elder Henry B. Eyring told humorous and personal recollections of their experiences.
Elder Perry closed the video segments by sharing his confidence that the temple will usher in a new era of dynamic growth of the Church in New York.
Costumes were colorful and clever. Dance routines were energetic, and the music toe tapping.
Following the jubilee, Khaliel Kelly, a youth leader in the Westchester New York Stake, said there was more going on with the jubilee than just the development of talents.
"President Hinckley knew that in the process of having fun that the youth would grow in testimony and learn to sacrifice time and energy," she said.
The blessings of the jubilee, she said, will extend beyond the entertainment of the night to last their entire lives.
