Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School

Yeah, like a war zone.

Okay, so this is based on the real-life High School for Performing Arts in New York City, which is now called LaGuardia High School.

They've changed the name of it.

But this is a place that gave us, like, Liza Minnelli and Jennifer Aniston and Timothee Chalamet in various incarnations over the years.

They were part of the church choir.

My older sister went to LaGuardia High School of Music and Art.

Nice.

My other sister, I have two sisters, both of them went to the high school of music and art.

Fame followed the lives of teenagers at a performing arts high school in New York City.

Of course, the Fame High School is based on LaGuardia High School, which is a very real performing arts high school in New York City with very successful graduates.

People like Jennifer Aniston, Timothee Chalamet, Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Carroll, Adrienne Brody, so many more.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, so many people went to this school.

No, thank you.

I went to LaGuardia High School of Professional Performing Arts.

And like I said, I also went to Brooklyn College.

So I threw a lot at you at the same time here.

How did it enter your life?

Well, to make a long story short, like I said, I went to IS218 and I went to PS152.

But then after that, for high school, I went to LaGuardia High School of Professional Performing Arts.

And so at that time, when I was in LaGuardia, Well, no, even before that, even before that, even in my junior high school years, I was performing with District 6, but not as much as I was playing with them during high school.

Stewart's background readied him for the collection's educational aspects.

Years ago, while teaching at LaGuardia High School, his alma mater, he would invent and assign to address specific students' technical needs.

But I never wrote them down, he said with a groan, which was so dumb.

He'll have no such regrets with the 24 American Caprices.

Um, and I grew up at Ballet Academy East.

I went to Manhattan Youth Ballet, and then I went to LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, which is where I was exposed to Martha Graham technique and Horton and choreography and improv that really, like, changed my life and very much influenced how I dance now.

Um, I went to college, uh, for dance and also got a minor in political science from UC Santa Barbara, um- And upon graduation, I freelanced for a year, got some very, um, special coaching from my gorgeous aunt, Heather Watts.

[laughs]

By the time you were 16, you had written around 50 songs.

Yet at that point, your heart was set on being a dancer, and that's what you studied at LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts.

Why did you choose dance over music at that time?

Well, actually, I'll share a secret with you.