Stepping to a new beat

BARSTOW • Clapping a pair of wooden slats together, sixth-grader Cri’style Williams walks on stage.

Tap, tap, tap, tap-boom-tap, tap, tap.

After a few beats, Carter Ross and Brian Smalls join Williams, tapping sticks to a complementary pattern.

Tap, boom-clap, tap, boom-clap, tap, tap, tap.

One by one, another joins the stage with a different makeshift instrument, creating an increasingly complex cadence of fluid rhythm.

The sixth-graders at Cameron are preparing for their first stomp routine performance under the watchful eye of Ryan Beal. The 1996 Barstow High School graduate works with students inside the classroom as a tutor at Central High School. Now he’s moved outside the classroom with about 30 sixth-graders, teaching each a different series of moves — like clapping, stomping or  drumming — that then weaves into an intricate harmony of percussion.

Beal, who began participating in step performances as a high-schooler, describes stomp as “constructing different types of rhythms and beats to give a complete sound.”

It’s easy for the 31-year-old, self-described artist who stomps, paints and writes, but mainly sings, to rattle off a spontaneous beat. “I hear the sounds in my head,” he said.

The school’s first stomp show has encouraged some students who avoid the spotlight, like Manual Gutierrez, to take the stage. Gutierrez, who mans a pair of cymbals during the show, said his grandmother also encouraged him to get on stage.

“I usually get stage fright but she wants me to perform,” said the 12-year-old.

Beal got the idea to assemble a stomp crew after helping chaperone the Cameron students, including his sixth-grade sister Destiny Pace, on a field trip to see the production of “Stomp” at the Pantages Theater in February. He saw a spark.

“Some of them have never stomped — but it’s in them,” said Beal.

Students like Marissa Sprague found a new interest after seeing the live show.

“It encouraged me to try it,” she said.

But the coordinated routines only came together after practicing almost everyday after class. “Uh-uh, those beats have to be cleaned up,” said Beal as he listened during rehearsal Monday.

Beal said the students’ first performance follows the story line of a boy who wakes up in a dream and encounters different animals and people who teach him various rhythmic patterns. He journeys through the dream and when the  boy wakes up, he finds he’s able to perform all the steps. “As long as you keep dreaming,” said Beal pointing to the story’s theme, “it can become a reality.”

The sixth-graders will perform Thursday, March 18 at 6 p.m. in the Cameron Elementary School cafeteria on 801 Muriel Drive.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4122 or elee@desertdispatch.com