Deltona’s own Laker Girl has dreams beyond the court

By Mark Harper, Staff Writer
Daytona Beach News-Journal
April 18, 2011

Aspiring actress Angel Dudley, new to Los Angeles and looking for opportunities to break into show business, got a tip from her mother.

Marquita Wen told her about auditions for the Los Angeles Clippers Spirit Dance Team.

Angel had grown up in dance academies and been a member of the Deltona High School Elite dance team that won the National Kickline Championships. But, she thought, why try out for the Clippers when the crosstown team, the Los Angeles Lakers, was looking for dancers?

So in 2007, she became a Laker Girl.

Dudley, 23, has spent the better part of the last four years taking the floor when Kobe Bryant & Co. grab some bench during timeouts. Laker Girls dance before Hollywood celebrities Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Denzel Washington and former Laker Girl Paula Abdul, not to mention the moguls who could someday give Dudley her big break, and dancing with pop star Rihanna during halftime of the NBA All-Star game.

“It’s really humbling,” Dudley said during a telephone interview last week. “Some girls try out four, five, six, seven times. They prepare for months. I’m lucky I got a chance to be a part of this.”

Dudley’s journey from local girl to Laker Girl starts in Deltona, where she grew up. It’s a city that often generates confused looks from those unfamiliar.

“I tell people I’m from Deltona and a lot of people don’t know where that is. They say, ‘Are you sure you don’t mean Daytona?’ ” she said.

She attended Deltona Lakes Elementary and Galaxy Middle School before moving on to Deltona High, where she graduated in 2005 as the senior class president.

All the time, she was a student at the Deltona Dance Academy, where Renee Lindsay was office secretary.

“I noticed her right away. She was such a cute girl,” said Lindsay, who’s now a teacher at Community Learning Center West, an alternative public school in Orange City.

Lindsay recommended that Dudley become part of the school’s competition team, which put her into the pipeline for the Deltona High Elite Dance Team that Lindsay coached.

In high school, Dudley was “full of energy and fun,” and shared the drive and determination that other team members had, helping push the team to its national championship in the Universal Dance Association competition.

After high school, Dudley went to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. She studied there for a year and a half and loved it, loved attending the Broadway shows, including “Wicked,” but decided to finish at the school’s other campus in L.A.

That’s when the Lakers thing happened.

It’s been a heady time for the organization. The Lakers have won the last two NBA Finals and are a favorite to be there again this year.

And Los Angeles — a city without a professional football team — has fully embraced its Lakers.

“Everybody in L.A., they live and breathe and worship the players,” Dudley said. “Everybody, all day everywhere, people are head-to-toe in Lakers gear. It is crazy.”

Dudley said she, too, sometimes gets caught up in the excitement on the court and has learned to appreciate basketball. But she’s also serious about making her career happen.

Her experience with the Lakers has exposed her to lots of community-service events, where she meets lots of young girls who are awed to be around her. It’s reinforced one value into her ambition. As she dreams of becoming an actress, performing on Broadway and in films and earning an Oscar, she also envisions the type of star she wants to be.

“I don’t want to be one of those actresses, not like Lindsay Lohan. … There are so many poor examples. So many kids look up to her, and I understand Hollywood can get trying sometimes. … I want to be an actress who kids can look up to. I want to give back to the community.”

For now, though, it’s about studying her craft, watching the types of films she wants to make, such as “Gladiator,” and “Requiem for a Dream,” while enjoying time with her boyfriend and earning a living, working as a hostess at a Japanese sushi bar and restaurant.

She’s landed one small role on “The Bold and the Beautiful,” a CBS soap, as well as some commercials, and is thinking about whether to try out for the Lakers next season or to devote more time to other opportunities.

“For some people, joining the Laker Girls is like the top … there’s no surpassing it,” Dudley said. “For me, it is the top. … I just don’t want to stop here.”