Ben Vereen brings song and dance to Tucson

“I just go. I don’t even think about it,” the singer/dancer/actor said during a phone call last month from his home in California.

At 70, his plate is as full as it’s ever been as he experiences what is easily a career resurgence.

• There’s the autobiographical Broadway musical “Reflections” that he’s developing with writer Joe Calarco. He hopes it’s on stage in 2017.
• His Amazon series “Sneaky Pete,” which debuted in January, was picked up for a second season.
• He has a recurring role in the new Fox comedy “Making History,” and last October won critics’ raves as Dr. Scott in a remake of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

But if you ask him what role he likes best, he’ll tell you it has nothing to do with the small screen or the big stage.

“Working with the young people, doing these projects for Tucson,” he said, referring to his 3-year-old Wellness Through the Arts program.

Vereen, who has been a part of the University of Arizona’s dance community for years, established the program and the Ben Vereen Awards that honor student performers with a chance to perform in New York City. It’s a way to promote the arts in schools and communities because art, he said, is not just about “singing, dancing, playing an instrument. Life itself is an art form.”

“By denying the art in school, then we’re not giving (young people) the chance to shoot as far as they want,” he said. “I’m quite passionate about the arts in schools. It also aids in other education because you’re being creative.”

Vereen, who has been performing since he was a teen studying at New York’s famed High School of Performing Arts, believes kids achieve their full potential in large part because of arts education. His program helps promote that with workshops and outreach that includes holding essay contests asking young people to write about how they deal with such issues as self-image, diabetes and bullying.

“What I’m looking for is for them to express their pain and to heal, and arts do just that,” he said, adding that they adapt the essays into poems, musicals or monologues and bring the kids on stage to perform them.

Vereen said his WTA Tucson program is about a year old, although he’s been doing his Ben Vereen Awards here for a few years. When he launched the programs in Sacramento, California, and San Diego he knew Tucson would have to be next.

“Tucson is a very special place in my heart. I’m a Wildcat,” he said with a chuckle, recalling how he first came to Tucson years ago on the invitation of a former high school principal who had seen him on Dinah Shore’s TV show “Dinah.” Years later, he met his biological brother, James Middleton, who lives in Tucson.

Early on, Vereen established a relationship with the UA School of Dance. He conducted workshops and performances for years before getting an honorary UA doctoral degree in 1999.

He’s in Tucson with his new song-and-dance show, “Steppin’ Out Live,” which will feature student dancers and pays tribute to Frank Sinatra and Broadway. Expect to hear Sinatra classics including “My Way” and legendary and recent Broadway gems including “Defying Gravity.”

Vereen said it’s his way of tipping his hat to the artists who influenced him and to say thank you to his fans.

“We call it ‘Steppin’ Out Live,’ but I call it my gratitude tour,” he said. “I thank my audiences for letting me entertain them all these years and sticking by me.”