24 · CLIMATE · September 2015 • SPOTLIGHT • 1 4 5 6 2 3

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SPOTLIGHT •
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Photos by Erin Ashford Photography
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1) Amanda Nowak from Las Vegas (Lead Dancer, Vegas Showgirl)
2, Christopher with some the cast of Vegas Showgirl.
3. Duo Ronin from Las Vegas (Blake Cater and Chris Jones)
months moving about in front of a green
screen, laying down the wall-climbing,
web-slinging body moves used in the
first Spiderman movie.
The Childers resume begins at age 3.
As soon as he was able to walk, he danced,
a natural development considering his
mother was a professional dancer who had
her own studio, Foster City Dance Theater,
and taught hundreds of Peninsula children
and adults.
Among them: Olympic gold medalist
Kristi Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi, also six-time
world professional figure skating champion, is an accomplished dancer, as anyone
who tunes in to “Dancing with the Stars”
can attest. Childer’s late mother, Sabina,
taught Yamaguchi ballet and judged her ice
skating routines at Fashion Island Ice Chalet in Foster City before the old Fashion Island mall evolved into Bridgepointe.
24 · CLIMATE · September 2015
4. Amanda Nowak performs a sexy French sofa solo.
5. Misha’Le DJ and drag superstar from Las Vegas
6. Christopher with the cast of “Aria”, his exclusive premiere show for the Silversea World Cruisers.
As puberty beset Childers, his mother
decided a stern hand was needed and she
sent him off to Peninsula Ballet School on
B Street in San Mateo.
“It was a very strict ballet school and
it straightened me out. I remember just
being horrified because the teacher was a
Russian and she had a stick, and she’d hit
you with it. I got very serious about my
dancing … she just had to crack the whip,
and it worked.
“Thank God she did.”
He turned pro at age 15.
For $4.75 an hour he danced in Marriott Great America’s Royale Theater kid’s
revue, “Bugs Bunny’s Life Story.” Because
he was tall, every other day he donned the
costume of the giant chicken character,
Foghorn Leghorn, a heavy, hot, fiberglass
apparatus in which he was to be light on
his giant, three-toed chicken feet.
“I was in heaven,” he said. “Fifteen
years old, my first experience working
a show, five shows a day. It was killer. I
would have done more for free.”
The next year he auditioned for Disney and won a part in what was supposed
to become the extravagant, mind-bending
show called ‘Fantasmic,’ but because the
technology wasn’t ready he performed in
a replacement, ‘Show Biz Is.’ At age 17,
he was one of Disney’s “Kids of the Kingdom.” He was on his way, earning big
bucks and holding a union card.
As soon as he turned 18, Vegas
beckoned.
And herein lies the nexus of Angelica’s
and the Folies.
He was hired on at the Tropicana in
the line at the Folies Bergere, “the one that
has the tall, beautiful women. I was dancing next to the showgirls, which, when I