When high school juniors scour the mall looking for the perfect spring dress, it's time for the prom. But not for 17-year-old Ismerai Calcaneo. She's shopping for the Oscars.
It's a search for a dress this Roosevelt High student could never have imagined. And it took her teacher's Instagram plea from her and a group of donors to prepare Ismerai and sixth-grader Porché Brinker for their red carpet walk Sunday at the Dolby Theatre.
Porché Brinker, 12, tries on her dress before the 2024 Academy Awards.
(Courtesy of Ben Proudfoot)
Both Los Angeles Unified School District students appear in “The Last Repair Shop,” which has been nominated for best documentary short at the 2024 Academy Awards. The film, presented by LA Times Studios and Searchlight Pictures, tells the story of technicians who repair LAUSD students' musical instruments.
Ismerai, an alto saxophonist from Boyle Heights, has used an instrument borrowed from the school district since she was in fifth grade. Brinker, of Palms Middle School, started playing the violin in the fourth grade.
“Never in my life did I think that the little dream of playing my instrument would lead me to walk the red carpet,” Ismerai said.
But once the excitement over the Academy Award nomination and invitation to the ceremony subsided, concern began to set in.
“My mom told me that going to the Oscars was going to require more preparation to find a dress, someone to do my hair and makeup,” she said. “When my mom said these things, she made me more anxious because we don't have money to pay these expenses.”
Her uncle, who is like a father to her, works as a janitor. Her mother is a domestic worker. As Mexican immigrants, they both work long hours to meet the family's basic needs, Ismerai said.
When Ismerai told her former ninth-grade English teacher, Jo Anna Mixpe Ley, that she was going to the Oscars, Ley said she noticed the girl's cautious tone.
“There's a lot of disparity when it comes to the economy and resources, but also the access you have to things,” said Ley, who also grew up in Boyle Heights. “I told him not to worry about it. “The community always takes care of the community.”
Ley, who has worked as a community organizer in Boyle Heights since she was an LAUSD student, put out a call for help via Instagram on February 22. Messages began flooding her inbox almost immediately. Parents offered donations at a parent conference that same night.
Within days, Ismerai had a free facial, a professional makeup artist, and Alicia Keys' personal stylist, Tanya “Nena Soul Fly” Meléndez. Her $189 dress from Macy's was donated by Ben Proudfoot's film company, Breakwater Studios.
Meléndez and Ley have been friends for a long time and when she saw the Instagram post, she said she had to help.
“I feel like a lot of the reasons I'm in the position I'm in now, and the way I've overcome a lot of my personal challenges, is because people supported me,” Melendez said. “It's important to me to keep doing the same thing and, with this young woman, she is the next generation on the rise.”
Meléndez grew up in Highland Park and attributes much of his success (combing Bad Bunny's hair for Time magazine's 2023 cover and, more recently, Alicia Keys' hair for a portrait painted by Kehinde Wiley) to members of the community in East Los Angeles. She jewelry wherever she could, barely scraping by until a friend gave her a space in 2017 at a gallery in Chinatown to display photos of her hair-through artwork, which was eventually seen by Alicia Keys.
Ismerai also expressed her gratitude to everyone who made sure she could walk the red carpet with pride.
“Ben and the entire team are amazing people who understand the students' circumstances,” Ismerai said. “All those times my dad had to take me to music schools, those late nights, all the hard work he had to do, it finally paid off.”
Porché will sit alongside Proudfoot and co-director Kris Bowers on the Dolby's first floor. The rest of the team, including Ismerai, will sit on the third mezzanine due to limited seating in the orchestra section, Proudfoot said.
When Porché's grandmother and primary caregiver, Joy Biagas, found out her granddaughter was going to the Oscars, she felt an equal mix of excitement and stress. She went straight to Amazon to find shoes for her granddaughter's big night. After failing to find the correct size online, grandmother and granddaughter headed to Nordstrom Rack in Westfield Culver City, where they found white shoes with a lace bow on the top.
For the dress, Biagas took a more hands-off approach. Porché went to a bridal store with two representatives from Breakwater Studios and chose a blue ballerina-style dress.
“I didn't want to interfere when she picked out her dress,” Biagas said. “I'm too conscious of money. She would have stood in my way.”
Breakwater Studios' support of Porché goes beyond donating her dress and hair expenses. Proudfoot also funds his private violin lessons, Biagas said.
“At my old school, when I didn't have private lessons, there was one teacher for the entire orchestra and he didn't know much about violin because he plays the flute,” Porché said. “Sometimes he would just play a video for us to watch.”
Proudfoot said a key theme of the documentary focuses on accessibility to the arts for students from low-income communities. The documentary's 18-person crew, which includes the production team, instrument technicians, Ismerai and Porché, will arrive at Hollywood's biggest stage on a yellow school bus.
“You don't have to ride in a nice limo to represent your community and who you are,” Ismerai said. “I'm excited to show my childhood riding the bus… and represent LAUSD.”
