When West Side Story was being mounted at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ, in 2016, Garcia-Lee was offered the role of Mugsy. "For whatever reason, it was not the right fit for me."Īfter that, two more productions didn't cast her as Graziella. "I was a wreck sobbing to my mother on the phone," she says. In 2009, Garcia-Lee was considered for Graziella in the Broadway revival but didn't get the role after countless callbacks. She would go on to perform in five more Broadway shows: Nice Work If You Can Get It, On the Town, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, most recently, Moulin Rouge! All the while, she held out hope that West Side Story would someday come her way. After graduating high school, Garcia-Lee set off for New York City, where she made her Broadway debut at 17 years old in The Phantom of the Opera. She's been banging on West Side Story's door ever since. "She gets those big features in 'Dance at the Gym' and in 'Cool.' is so powerful, strong and such a baddie." "The last time I stepped into Graziella's shoes, it changed my life," she says. The magic of performing Jerome Robbins' iconic choreography never left her. As a sophomore, she was cast as Graziella in her school's production of West Side Story. Garcia-Lee went to high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she studied first ballet and then drama. "I would lay in bed until 3 in the morning staring at the ceiling, thinking, 'OK, I'm ready to do it,'" she says.
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Her mother, Terri Garcia, was a professional dancer in the 1980s (she even danced Francisca in the West Side Story tour in 1985), and Garcia-Lee was eager to follow in her footsteps. Her bedroom walls were lined with cutouts from the pages of Dance Spirit, which served as inspiration for her goals. On top of her regular training, she would travel multiple hours each day to New York City and New Jersey for classes with Steps on Broadway and the Princeton Ballet School, respectively.
Garcia-Lee grew up training at her mother's dance studio in Bucks County, PA, The Pennsylvania School of Performing Arts (her mother sold the school earlier this year).
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