Drew Nelson of Plainsboro, who has landed a part in the Learning Channel’s “My Life as a Child,” has been busy promoting the show at press conferences in California and New York City recently. He is one of 20 kids selected for a six-part documentary premiering on Monday, February 26. Drew, 11, is a fifth grade student at Millstone River School.##M:[more]##
More than 400 children, ages 7 to 12, submitted videos to TLC, and Drew was among the 20 given digital video cameras and instructions to present views on their parents, peers, growing up, and their lives in general. He is one of the four appearing at press conferences. It is TLC’s first user-generated series focusing on a first-person perspective from our youngest generation. Each child was producer, cameraperson, and director of his or her segment, capturing footage over a four-month period.
“First-person filmmaking by these children gives this series an intimacy unequaled on television,” said David Abraham, executive vice president and general manager, TLC, in a press release. “Furthermore, their perspectives on today’s most pressing issues, including race, poverty, bullying, and more are deeply insightful and far beyond their years.”
Drew has had an active life on stage for several years with American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, Cedar Lake Ballet, New Jersey Opera Festival, and Kelsey Theater. He has appeared in such productions as “Nutcracker,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Don Quixote,” and “Swan Lake.” Theater and opera performances include “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Oliver!” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Eugene Onegin,” and “Petrouchka.”
He also appeared on a commercial for Coppertone Suncare shown worldwide. As a dancer he studies dance at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at ABT in New York City three times a week, and one day at Princeton Dance and Studio Theater with Chris Martin, former ABT dancer. He has studied musical theater and voice at Westminster Conservatory and acting and voice at the Professional Center for the Arts.
His father, Kevin, works for Bristol Myers Squibb and his mother, Suzanne, a former pharmaceutical sales representative for Roche, commutes with Drew into New York City at least three times a week for his ballet training. Drew’s two older siblings include Mackenzie, an eighth grade student at Community Middle School and also a dancer; and Alex, a sophomore at High School North.
Suzanne Nelson has been a ballet dancer in a Midwest ballet company (before college) and a teacher at Princeton Ballet School and Princeton Dance and Studio Theater. “When not commuting, I’m running kids to various life experiences and picking up kids junk off the floor so as not to trip,” she says. Her current community service project is choreographing and rehearsing the dances in the Community Middle School’s production of “Flapper” which opens in March. She is also a substitute teacher in the WW-P school district.
After Drew attended the ABT summer intensive last summer, he was invited to begin training early at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School usually for ages 12 to 18. He has already been invited to return to the summer intensive program and auditions for placement are in February.
At the press conference in California Drew told reporters, “My life is different because I do ballet. I think boys can do ballet. I think they were meant to do ballet. King Louis XIV, if any of you have heard of it, he really liked it. He did something about it, I forget. He almost created it. It’s a different form of dance. So I really like doing ballet and that’s how I’m different because my life is different. Most kids my age, boys would be doing football. I think I’m going to be a dancer. Maybe I’ll be a screenwriter and be on TV that way.”
