A family’s fancy footwork

DANCING FAMILY—Clockwise from top left, Tiffany Van Meerten and her four children, Estelle, 9, Isaac, 5, Sophie, 12, and Michael Jr., 7, lie in a sea of worn-out and outgrown ballet, jazz and tap shoes from years of classes. IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers The Van Meerten family really knows what it means to keep on their toes.

Three children from the Camarillo family will join more than 130 performers this weekend in “The Nutcracker” ballet at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center in Oxnard.

Michael Van Meerten Jr., 7, and his sisters, Sophie, 12, and Estelle, 9, will perform in the Ventura County Ballet Company’s production of the holiday classic, which will also include professional dancers from the American Ballet Theater in New York.

Kathleen Noblin, founder of the Ventura County Ballet Company and its official school, the Ballet Academy Ventura, said her students learn invaluable lessons performing onstage with professional ballet dancers.

“They learn what it takes,” she said. “They see the amount of work these dancers do. . . . You can’t teach this; you have to experience it onstage.”

The Van Meerten children are accustomed to performing together. Last December, the three oldest children joined their mother, Tiffany, on the Oxnard stage in their first “Nutcracker” performance. In the spring, they appeared with their younger brother, 5-year-old Isaac, when he debuted in a stage production of “Peter and the Wolf.”

The first time the three older Van Meerten children appeared with their mother onstage was in the 2007 production of “Celebration of Dance” at the Fred Kavli Theatre in Thousand Oaks.

Tiffany Van Meerten, 37, said her four children have grown up watching her perform ballet and showed an interest in the art from an early age. Van Meerten, who began taking ballet lessons at age 5, passed her love for ballet on to her children and others. For several years, she taught ballet to area preschoolers, who’ve also performed in public.

Each of her children began taking lessons that included different dance genres—jazz, hip-hop, tap, ballet—at age 3. The three older ones have stuck with ballet. Isaac’s specialty is hip-hop, his sisters said.

At the Van Meerten home last Friday, Michael Jr., quiet and shy offstage, confidently demonstrated a grand jeté— leaping across the living room floor with his legs outstretched at a 90-degree angle. He’ll perform the move as a snowflake in the weekend production.

Sophie performed a grand battement, swinging one leg in the air so that it was perpendicular to her body.

“I like doing ballet—it’s very uplifting,” she said. “I put my heart into it. I just really love it, but I’m not sure I want to do it (for a living).”

Outgoing Estelle said she plans to continue with ballet until she’s at least able to “go on pointe,” or perform on the tips of her toes, which usually happens around age 12. Of her four children, Van Meerten said, Estelle is the one who says most often she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up.

Noblin said the Van Meerten children are hardworking students.

She said Sophie is a focused ballerina, progressing from intermediate to advanced, and that Estelle has stage presence.

“Don’t get me wrong; all the kids are good, but she has a certain flair,” Noblin said.

Michael is such a hard worker in class, Noblin said, that she plans to award him a scholarship soon.

Noblin awards scholarships infrequently to academy students who’ve worked at ballet for years and proven they’re motivated. Most often, it’s given to a boy because there are fewer boys than girls in the performing art and Noblin said she wants to encourage them to continue.

As for Van Meerten, she’ll sit out this public performance, cheering on the children from the audience with her son Isaac and her husband, Michael.

But she said she’ll continue performing ballet until she can no longer move.

“We’re just kind of a dancing family,” Van Meerten said. “Frankly, I don’t know what we’d do without it.”

Tickets to the Ventura County Ballet Company’s “The Nutcracker” range in price from $9 to $23.

Performances are at 2 and 7 p.m. Sat., Nov. 21 and at 2 p.m. Sun., Nov. 22 at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.

For more information, call (805) 486-2424.