Descendants: Disney are making High School Musical but with its best known characters such as Cruella de Vil and Jafar

'I have to uphold these characters - they’re loved by so many people'

(Disney Enterprises)

Kenny Ortega made High School Musical a global phenomenon, so when Disney decided that it was time to try to replicate that success using some of its best-known characters, it was a no-brainer to call upon the choreographer and director who also choreographed Dirty Dancing and worked with Michael Jackson. I spent a day watching the 65-year-old work on the set of Descendants, a new Disney Channel film set in a high school populated by the offspring of characters such as Cruella de Vil and Jafar. When it aired in America last month, it was instantly hailed a success. A cartoon spin-off was announced and a TV series has gone into production with the cast reprising their roles.

We are at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The campus is set against a vista of the Pacific Ocean and in a building with a facade that looks like a castle, the teenage cast are doing a big dance number on a staircase. After Ortega calls “cut” from behind several monitors, they crowd around the screen and the avuncular figure of Ortega to watch it back. He is impressive to watch, coaxing performances out rather than demanding them, and keeping his teenage charges in awe with tales of having worked with Michael Jackson for 25 years.

During the lunch break we sit down to chat. His small dog, Manly, named after his favourite beach in Sydney, is at his side. “When people hear about the project they say, I can’t believe nobody has ever thought of this before,” says Ortega. “It really is original in that it deals with the descendants of these iconic characters, the children of Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Jafar, and Cruella de Vil, and Beast and so on. And you know, what are their offspring like? Is mother like daughter? Father like son?”

(Disney Enterprises)

The good Disney characters live in the idyllic kingdom of Auradon. The evil characters inhabit the Isle of the Lost. When Ben, son of Belle and Beast, is about to take the throne in Auradon, his first proclamation is that the evil characters’ spawn should not suffer the sins of their parents. So he allows them to go to high school in Auradon.

Descendants arrives at a time when Disney is mining its franchises for all they are worth. It is making live-action movie versions of their much-loved cartoons. They now own the Star Wars franchise, with six movies set to come out in the next four years, whereas it took almost 30 years for the first six to arrive. There are also partnerships with Marvel Studios and Pixar. Disney is working on a formula that capitalises on nostalgia and Descendants fits perfectly into that.

Ortega admits that because of the famous characters there is added pressure. “In saying yes, I realised we accomplished a lot with High School Musical and now there was something else and that was my responsibility to uphold these characters. They’re so loved by so many people.”

He laughs when I tell him that he is like a kindly uncle on set. “You know, I’m at home. Someone asked me the other day; did I miss home? And I said, ‘I am home! This is my home. This is where I live!’ I’ve been on the road since I was 19 years old. I feel very parental. And there’s a real sort of paternal thing happening, and I love that. I’m not a dad, though, I’m the director, and I’m just there to host them through this experience as best I can, to excite and inspire them to want to do their best.”

(Disney Enterprises)

Could he teach me to dance? “There was a time in my life when I used to say that everyone has rhythm. And that it’s just about unlocking it and discovering it and using it and… Then I worked with this one artist and I walked away going, ‘Not true!’” He refuses to reveal who, before adding: “I think there are people that are born to dance, like Michael Jackson, you know? The guy was born to dance and born to sing and born to be a performer. And then on top of it, he studied and he worked hard.”

Jackson’s reputation remains under a dark cloud, as questions remain about his relationships with young children. “I would like to see it come to an end,” Ortega says. “I’d like us to just circle around the best part, which was Michael’s incredible heart, talent, passion, compassion and intelligence.

“He’s an irreplaceable human being and artist and his loss I suffered greatly, as did so many people, especially, of course, his children and family. Those were dark days. Difficult days. We were shooting our finale of this movie and I looked at that night, and I thought, ‘Of anyone I could think of, Michael would have enjoyed being here.’ The castle in the background, beautiful young people, and this music and dance. A wonderful fantasy and story.”

The last film that Ortega made was 2009’s This Is It, a concert movie based on footage from rehearsals for Jackson’s series of sold-out London concerts. It looked very much like an attempt to profit in the wake of the superstar’s death and Ortega argues his hand was forced, “It wasn’t a matter of my wanting to do it. It was a matter of it was going to be done with me or without me. Rather than putting it in the hands of somebody that was not familiar with what was going on, maybe we should take the responsibility to see that those puzzle parts are put together so that we can help to tell a story of what Michael was hoping to accomplish.

(Disney Enterprises)

“It was really something that I didn’t want to take on. I thought it was an overwhelming task for me at that time, I didn’t even have a chance to kind of grieve properly or to really step back and have any clarity of what was going on. And in the end, I feel grateful that it was embraced and that it didn’t come off in any sort of exploitative way. I was very concerned about that. And did I think it was too soon? Yeah.”

It was John Hughes, the godfather of the high-school teen movie, who helped to turn Ortega into a movie director. “John said, ‘Kenny, I’d like for you to direct this parade sequence in the middle of the movie [Ferris Bueller’s Day Off].’ And I said, ‘I’m not in the Directors Guild.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ll get you into the Directors Guild if you will do it. I would like you to do it.’ And so he ushered me into directing.”

Ortega’s greatest claim to fame is that he invented “dirty dancing”. “I remember telling Eleanor Bergstein, the writer of Dirty Dancing, about when I was a kid in middle school going to Saturday-night dances and a teacher getting up on the stage and making an announcement and saying that if there’s any dirty dancing, the lights will go on and the dance will stop immediately.

“And half an hour in, the dance was over. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. The music, the dancing, the atmosphere, the energy. We would just get carried away. I remembered what that was, and we kind of found dirty dancing.”

He was slated to direct a remake of Dirty Dancing, and the project got as far as screentests, before the film was put on hold. He still hopes that one day he will put Baby back in the corner.

‘Descendants’ is on the Disney Channel from 25 September