She rarely answers the telephone anymore. It could be her.
Every time it rings, it scares, well, the stuffing out of her. “Please, God,” she whispers to herself, “tell me she is not coming home.”
You have to know a bit about Renee Radomski to understand it. She raised Kayla, 18, with considerable help from Renee’s parents, Dave and Carolyn.
The little girl back then was a natural. At age 2, still in diapers, she was mesmerized by Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video, bopping and swinging to every beat and dance move.
That same year, she managed to do what many adults cannot do — stay awake for an entire performance of “The Nutcracker.” She came home, dressed up the Big Bird stuffed animal Carolyn had given her and danced the “Nutcracker” ballet.
“I called every studio I could find to ask if they took 2-year-olds,” Renee Radomski, 39, says now. “One finally agreed to take her for half-hour classes. She loved it.”
At age 3, Kayla was enrolled in tap and ballet classes. At age 5, the hour-long classes in jazz and lyrical dancing began. In sixth grade, she was enrolled at the Denver School of the Arts, where for two years she majored in dance.
It was at that time the calls arrived, and the auditions began. The girl would fly here and there, every director falling in love with her, only to lament that she was not 18.
Renee, single mother and nursing supervisor at Holly Heights Nursing Home in Denver, who still lives with Kayla in her parents’ Aurora home, paid for it all. What else does a parent do when their kid’s dream is on the line?
She put her in high school in Highlands Ranch. It did not last. The auditions and travel did not stop. Janet Jackson and Britney Spears both lamented the girl wasn’t yet 18. They both wanted Kayla on stage behind them.
Renee would home-school her. Kayla this year graduated with honors.
In March, the Fox Broadcasting Co. came to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver to hold auditions for its “So You Think You Can Dance” series.
She danced with thousands that the first day. The next, the producers told Kayla not to worry, that she was going to the next step in Las Vegas.
In Las Vegas, she simply had to be no worse than 32 of 250 dancers invited. She made the top 20.
“I was screaming when I found out,” Renee Radomski said.
Kayla Radomski on Thursday made it from the bottom two to the final six on “So You Think You Can Dance.” Her mother is beside herself.
On Thursday, as she has done since the first day of the show, broadcast live, she called friends and relatives on the East Coast to find out if Kayla made the cut.
“I hate Thursdays,” Renee Radomski says.
She asks now that people pray for her daughter, and to vote, vote, vote for her this week.
“It is such a great opportunity for Kayla,” Renee Radomski says. “Maybe someone will see her and hire her. Whatever happens this week, I cannot tell you how proud of her I am.”
Of the thousands of dollars it has cost in airfare, costumes and dance classes for her to realize her daughter’s dream, Renee Radomski is firm.
“I would do it all again,” she said. “In a minute.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
