Nathan Balser, Artistic Director for the BYU Young Ambassadors, called into the Weekday Wake-Up on Monday, January 12 to promote this Saturday’s performance at Star Valley High School, hosted by the Star Valley Arts Council. The show begins at 7:00 p.m. with tickets available at StarValleyArts.org.

(0:00) Joining us now on the weekday wake up is Nathan Balser. Nathan is the artistic director for the (0:06) BYU Young Ambassadors who are coming to Star Valley. They’re going to be performing at the (0:11) Star Valley High School Auditorium on Saturday, January 17th, 7 o’clock p.m., all hosted by the (0:16) Star Valley Arts Council.

Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. We’re excited to have the (0:21) ambassadors coming back to Star Valley. For those who are not aware, tell us who are the BYU Young (0:26) Ambassadors.

Well, hello, Duke. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s a pleasure to direct the Young (0:32) Ambassadors.

They are a student performing ensemble from Brigham Young University. (0:37) They’ve been around since 1970. It’s like 55 years.

I hav, of course, only been directing (0:44) for a few of those, but they focus on musical theater type of performances, rock music, (0:52) pop music is injected into the program. But the purpose is to go around. We tour (1:02) regionally and then also internationally.

We were just in Brazil in May and China this last August. (1:10) So we take our message out. Hopefully it’s a message of joy and happiness through music and (1:16) dance.

It’s a great opportunity for us to be able to engage with audiences and communities (1:22) around the country and the world. If no one has seen Ambassadors, maybe someone that has, (1:29) what do they expect when they go to a show? What kind of performances happen on stage? (1:35) Yeah, okay. I think we call it a musical review.

So if you’ve been to a musical like, (1:42) gosh, what’s popular right now? Okay, Wicked. Wicked is hugely popular, right? (1:48) With the movie and then, of course, the stage production. So Wicked has a story about (1:58) these two women, Elphaba and Glinda, and their journey together, right? And there’s a plot (2:04) that follows and there’s songs that are sung and dances that are danced and tell the story.

(2:09) Well, a musical review isn’t quite like that because we don’t have the same sort of plot and (2:16) characters. What we do is we take snippets of different musicals and of different songs and (2:24) we kind of put them together in an order that’s fun and engaging and I think it makes sense. (2:31) And so you would see snippets.

In fact, we do one of the pieces from Wicked, we do that in our show, (2:38) Dancing Through Life. So does that make sense? Is that helpful? (2:42) Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

So it’s going to be a high energy show, correct? I mean, (2:47) it’s a lot of fun and entertainment. Yeah, big songs, big singing. These students (2:54) are about to graduate and a lot of them are headed to New York City.

They can sing with the best of (3:01) them. Their voices are amazing. And we have incredible dancers too.

We’re in the dance (3:05) department. So we’ve got amazing guests. It’s high energy.

It’s really fun. It’s a really fun (3:11) show. One of my favorite moments is this Queen medley we do.

So it’s a song like Somebody to (3:17) Love and Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s a party. Nathan Balser, the Artistic Director for the (3:22) BYU Young Ambassadors.

Don’t miss the show at Starbody High School, Saturday, January 17th. (3:29) Tickets are on sale and available now. Just go to starbodyarts.org for tickets, starbodyarts.org. (3:35) Can’t wait to see it.

Nathan, thanks for your time. We’ll see you in Afton in a couple days. (3:39) Can’t wait to get there.

Thanks, Duke.