Published September 25, 2009
By Sean O'Connell
The Charlotte Weekly
Sterling Masters remembers when the hip pain first occurred. Last October, she was performing in Cleveland as a member of the touring production of “A Chorus Line.” Her physical discomfort at the time was omnipresent but tolerable.
“As a dancer, nothing ever feels good. You never feel normal. So you just think, ‘Whatever. It’s sore. It will get better,’” said Masters, a Charlotte native who has been dancing since age 5.
But it didn’t get better. In fact, it got worse. A physician recommended cortisone shots and two weeks of rest, which worked. Temporarily. Masters felt good when she returned to the tour … until she started dancing.
“The pain went right back to where it was,” she said. She danced for another month before shutting her body down for surgery.
An MRI determined Masters had a labral tear. “It’s the same thing as a meniscus in your knee, but in your hip joint,” she said. “It’s very common in athletes, dancers and gymnasts – anyone who uses their leg in a kicking motion. But doctors just started operating on people (with this) five years ago. I guess I’m lucky to have gotten it now, if you can say that.”
Masters understood the risk of surgery. She’d watched a friend and fellow “Chorus Line” cast mate suffer the same injury, ending the dancer’s stint on the tour.
But Masters’ story didn’t end in Cleveland, and her career didn’t conclude on a surgeon’s table. Instead, she returned to the tour after 12 weeks of physical therapy, and will dance before her hometown crowd when “A Chorus Line” plays Belk Theater beginning Tuesday, Sept. 29.
Happy to be home
Masters grew up in south Charlotte, where her mother, Jami, runs a dance school. She was a preschooler when she enrolled in her mom’s program. She has danced the Belk Theater stage before, as a member of the North Carolina Dance Theatre’s “Nutcracker.” But this will be the first time Masters will dance in the Queen City as part of an equity – or actors’ union – tour.
“I’ve never really felt how I feel, because it’s the first time,” she said. “I feel like a local celebrity. It’s crazy. I’m just doing what I love to do, but to get the recognition that I’m getting here is incredible.”
Through “A Chorus Line,” Masters has toured the world. She has appeared in all 50 states, and recently returned from a stint in Japan, where she found a mild cultural disconnect between performer and patron.
“I think it’s a cultural thing, but they don’t respond during the performance,” Masters said. “And then after the performance they’re screaming on their feet and won’t leave the theater.”
She might find a similarly frenzied response when she performs in front of her home crowd. Masters used Facebook to promote her local appearance, and she has reserved more than 75 tickets for the run.
“This is the first opportunity people will have to see me since high school,” Masters said. Her parents plan to throw a cast party. Besides her family, Masters hopes to see Harry Owens, her former music teacher from Charlotte Latin, in the crowd. He and his wife have attended every tour Masters has done.
Masters is contracted to stay with “A Chorus Line” through mid-November. She said that while dance always has been her primary focus, having grown up in her mother’s dance studio, this show has helped her improve her singing and strengthen her voice.
“I’m singing more than I ever have in my entire life,” she said. “And for the first time, I’m understudying these principal roles who sing their own songs and have solo lines. Of course, in Charlotte I’ll be playing Kristine, who can’t sing. But with all of the other roles, it is an extensive vocal track.”
Masters emphasizes how important it is to stay active as a performer because competition in the field is thick. She said she knows too many people back in New York who are out of work and looking for performance gigs.
She’s not sure what she’ll do when her “Chorus Line” contract ends. She plans to come back to Charlotte to help with her mother’s Christmas show. She said Charlotte still feels like home, because her travel has kept her away from Manhattan. She’d like to spend more time in New York City, to make that bustling metropolis feel more like home.
“I’m excited to start my life in New York, to settle down a little bit,” Masters said. “Then I’ll pound the pavement in January.”
Want to go?
The Blumenthal Performing Arts Center presents “A Chorus Line” Sept. 29-Oct. 4 at the Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St., Charlotte. Sterling Masters will perform the role of Kristine Friday and Saturday, Oct. 2-3. For tickets, $20-$69, call 704-372-1000 or visit www.carolinatix.org.
To view the article online, go to www.carolinaweeklynewspapers.com.