Beau performing on the Disney Dream cruise ship
Does the show really have to go on or is that just a meaningless phrase somebody made up hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Who really knows who came up with that great saying, but, if you’re a seasoned actor, dancer and choreographer like Beau Middlebrook, you know exactly what “the show must go on” truly means.
He was performing on the Disney Dream cruise ship out of Port Canaveral, Florida, doing several different shows a day. The beautiful and apparently, quite sturdy ship, was scheduled to go to Nassau, Bahamas and Castaway Cay, which is Disney’s personal and very private island in the Caribbean, when he and all his show biz associates got one of the biggest surprises of their lives: Hurricane Sandy.
Beau and his co-workers performed in three main stage shows, Believe, Golden Mickey’s and Villains Tonight. They sang songs, danced and dressed up in extravagant costumes several times a day to entertain Disney’s passengers. Beau played many characters but it was dressing up as a pirate for the ‘Jack Sparrow’ show that he was particularly fond of, along with doing tumbling stunts, which he is excellent at, sword fighting and generally getting to be a kid all over again. Since he has trained as a dancer, actor and tumbler since a very young, the Disney shows were second nature to him. He also had two months of intense rehearsal in Canada before he even set foot on the cruise ship.
Rough seas on board the Disney Dream cruise ship during Hurricane Sandy
Beau is a natural at whatever he does and dancing and choreography, of course, are the things he loves a great deal. So, when hurricane Sandy hit and the Disney Dream was in the thick of it, he did what every great performer does – he carries on. The show not only must go on, but it did go on. His dancing and acting in those fun Disney shows, not only took his mind off of the potential dangers of the 115 mph winds the hurricane whipped up, but his professionalism and willingness to move forward with the show. This eased the minds of hundreds of audience members who otherwise, would have been hunkering down in their cabins praying for the deadly storm to turn left and leave them alone.
Beau and his dancing comrades were just what the passengers needed on that ship. Like the musical entertainers who calmed the crowds on the sinking Titanic, a hundred years before them, Beau and his fellow actors eased the tensions and the fears that filled the hearts of the voyagers on the Disney Dream. Who knows, maybe Beau’s talent and great performance actually kept the ship afloat and safe for the smooth journeys yet to come.
This is when the world knows greatness and that is Beau Middlebrook!
