TWO groups of ridiculously talented kids from insanely different parts of the world take center stage on two completely different cable channels tonight. And they prove that despite the odds, despite the situation, when you gotta sing and you gotta dance, you just gotta.
“Taking the Stage,” a 10-part MTV series created and produced by Nick Lachey, who was himself a reality star when he and then-wife Jessica Simpson soared in their own “Why-is-it-called Chicken-of-the-Sea?” show, “Newlyweds.”
Lachey has come a long way since then and the evidence is “Taking the Stage,” a musical reality show that tracks the lives of four fabulously talented kids in Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Professional Arts (his alma mater) as they work to achieve their dreams of fame and fortune.
You might suspect the show must be a real-life “Waiting for Guffman,” but it is actually a brilliantly done, real-life “Fame,” with all the triumphs, crushing defeats and other kinds of crushes among kids at an elite school. Featured are a beautiful ballerina, Jasmine, who is attracted to new kid handsome hip hopper, Tyler; angel-voiced singer, Mia; double-threat actress/dancer Shakira, and the driven, talented choreographer/dancer/singer, Malik.
On tonight’s premiere you’ll be on the edge of your seat as the kids compete in a talent show that’s judged by an executive from Jive Records and a major dance talent scout. It’s like “American Idol” without the hype and hysteria.
Quick cut from the Midwest to the Middle East in “Hometown Baghdad” a Sundance film about three more wildly talented young men in medical, dental and engineering schools who escape from the horrors of the Iraq war in music.
They made their own video diaries no holds barred of what it’s like to go to school while their families’ homes lie in ruins and when people they love are dying around them.
It is taking your life in your hands just walking around with a video camera, as Ausama, Saif, and Adel did. (Adel is a double risk because he plays in a heavy metal band, which is considered by the Shiites in his neighborhood to be “devil’s music.” )
As different as both shows are, at the heart of each is real heart.
Adel, the gorgeous Iraqi metal head/engineer sums up the drive of all these kids when he says: “It’s like Jimi Hendrix said, ‘I’m not going to choose the way I die, but I am going to choose the way I live.’ “
“Taking the Stage” Tonight at 10 on MTV “Hometown Baghdad” Tonight at 11:30 on Sundance