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Esta página no está disponible en español. South Florida Sun-SentinelThe Stomp Life Is Hard To BeatBy Rebecca Swain Vadnie
April 16, 2002 In a pop-group-spawning, tourist-attraction city like Orlando, finding someone who wants to be an entertainer is as easy as finding a front yard with an orange tree in it. Finding someone like Stomp performer Ana Sofia Pomales, however, is a little bit harder. The former Orlando resident has been with Stomp, which runs at the Coral Springs Center tonight through Thursday, for five years. The high-energy production combines comedy and dance with the use of out-of-the-ordinary objects such as trash cans, sinks and brooms as percussion instruments. The performers improvise parts of the production, so it's possible for each night's performance to be different. "The one thing about this show is that they let you be yourself," Pomales says from her Louisville, Ky., hotel room. "If I want to use more of my Latin comedic feel, I can use that. If I feel angry, sad, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be like cheery and `Yea!'" Over the phone, her voice resonates with each easy laugh, and one can almost hear the smile as she speaks. "That's why the show is so amazing; I can be myself and express myself through dance and movement," she says. Pomales has toured the United States, Canada, Europe and even Korea, but the road to Stomp success took a while. "When I was a little girl in Puerto Rico, I always wanted to be in a show," the 31-year-old dancer says. "There's four girls [in the family], and we always wanted to put a play on for my parents or my grandparents." Pomales came to Orlando from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, in 1988 when she was accepted at the University of Central Florida. "I was supposed to be by myself at first and then everybody came," she says. Her father, mother, grandmother and three sisters followed her, a show of solidarity for which she is still grateful. "I didn't know English that well, didn't know how to speak it, and there were a lot of situations, especially in college, where people spoke really fast and all I knew was Spanish," she says. "I was pretty glad to have my parents there for support." While studying at UCF, Pomales met her future dance instructor, Lesley Brasseux, who was with Southern Ballet Theatre and also teaching at the time. "I just fell in love with her technique, and she fell in love with my wanting to learn," Pomales says. After two semesters at UCF, Pomales transferred to Valencia Community College because of the smaller classes and began working with Brasseux regularly, sometimes taking up to eight dance classes a semester before earning her associate degree in arts and dance. For several years, she worked the theme-park circuit hoping, like many others, to make it in the entertainment industry. She began cashiering at the Magic Kingdom, then moved on to performing at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, doing commercials, dancing at Pleasure Island, playing Princess Jasmine of Aladdin fame and appearing in The Spirit of Pocahontas for Disney-MGM Studios. In 1997, she decided to move to Los Angeles to further her career. "I was living off 20 dollars a week. I didn't have a car, so I resorted to taking the bus," she says. "You hear all these stories. Before you're a success, you have to struggle." After a few months of auditions in a town notorious for swallowing up the streams of talent that feed into it everyday, Pomales was offered a small role in the Vanessa Williams/Chayanne movie Dance With Me. Later that same month, she auditioned for Stomp, which she first saw in Tampa. Soon after, she was offered a job with the tour. "I got the film ... and I got Stomp in the same month, so I was like, `Wow! Here I am.'" Her voice-energy level drops slightly when she talks about her five years on the road, doing four to six performances a week. She admits it can be tough. "Sometimes it's great; sometimes it isn't," she says. "Sometimes you miss your friends and family, and sometimes you're grateful to be away and traveling." However, her voice soon perks up again when she talks about the cities she has seen, what she has done and what she plans to do next. As for the future -- it might be choreography, it might be working in New York, who knows? Pomales is happy to take it a day at a time. "I tend not to worry about the future because the present is so phenomenal," she says, the sound of a smile returning to her voice. "I know something good will come my way. You never know what will happen tomorrow."
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