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Xander Allen, 18, a singer, actor, dancer and 2025 graduate of Harrison School for the Arts, has won the Betsye Kay Finch Performing Arts Foundation scholarship of $3,500. Xander has performed in numerous musicals at Harrison School for the Arts including Shrek the Musical, Cinderella, West Side Story, and Elf, Jr. He also sang and danced in Newsies with The Missing Piece Theatre Company, and directed and choreographed several musicals.
Xander’s passion for musical theatre was sparked at age 5 when he performed in Little Drummer Boy at Grace Church in Lakeland where his mother, Tara, was a worship pastor. Since then, his life has been driven by song, music and dance. In 2024, Tampa’s renowned Straz Center for the Performing Arts awarded Xander a Top 12 Best Performer of the Year for his work in the Straz Broadway Star of the Future program.
Xander and his family and friends were feted at the Betsye Kay Finch Performing Arts Foundation’s annual awards ceremony in Lakeland’s Hollis Garden on May 2. Looking forward to honing his performance skills, Xander plans to pursue a BFA in Musical Theatre at the University of Central Florida in Orlando this fall.
Helping aspiring musical theatre students realize their dreams was the aim of dance teacher Betsye Kay Finch, of Lakeland, who taught jazz, ballet and modern dance at Betsye Kay’s School of Dance for three decades. She also performed in local musicals and helped fundraise for the arts. Ms. Finch passed away at age 92 in 2019. Aiming to keep her mother’s joy of musical theatre alive, Ms. Finch’s daughter, Alexis Rocker, launched the BKF Performing Arts Foundation, Inc. in Lakeland, which awards annual scholarships to Polk County high school seniors planning to pursue a degree in musical theatre or dance. For more on the foundation, visit https://www.bkfperformingarts.org/.
Photo Credit: Robin Phillips