High School Musical's Kenny Ortega To Direct An Episode Of ABC Family's Bunheads

I still don’t love the title of ABC Family’s upcoming new dance-focused drama series Bunheads, but the recently released teaser does raise my hopes somewhat that this will be a fun show for the summer. The drama follows a Vegas showgirl who marries and moves to a town where she gets a job teaching dance at her mother-in-laws dance school. The series already has a good premise going for it, and now it looks like it’ll benefit from the dance and directing expertise of Kenny Ortega.

Kenny Ortega knows a thing or two about directing. Among his directing credits are all three High School Musical movies, and Newsies. And his TV credits include directing numerous episodes of Gilmore Girls. So he seems like a good fit off the bat to take on an episode of ABC Family’s Bunheads, not only based on his experience, but also his connection to GG creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Ortega is set to direct the third episode of Sherman-Palladino’s Bunheads for ABC Family. Production on the series began last week, with the show set to debut June 11 (9:00 p.m.).

In addition to directing, Ortega is a well known choreographer, having worked on films like Dirty Dancing, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and more recently, the Michael Jackson documentary This is It, which he choreographed and directed. Needless to say, he’s certainly a good fit for the job.

Below is the teaser for Bunheads, and further down, just for fun, you can see some of Ortega’s work as a choreographer in a classic Madonna video.