As a girl, Nafisa Abdul-Jillil liked to do flips off the couch. Her sister Aminah loved to dance.

"There was one show, 'Solid Gold,' that I watched faithfully," Aminah recalled. "The women were so beautiful -- their legs and jumps."

Nowadays it's Nafisa, 25, and Aminah, 23, who transfix little TV-watchers. The East High graduates dance behind some of hottest musical stars around: Usher, No Doubt, Mystikal, Fiona Apple, Jay-Z, Tweet, Tina Turner.

There was no grand plan for success, their mom said. Nura Abdul-Halim and her husband, Jimmy Bell, just wanted their kids -- including one son and two other daughters -- busy and active.

"There ain't much to do here in Alaska," she said. "So I targeted their energy to what they were into."

Aminah began training at the now-defunct Conservatory of Dance. Then she and Nafisa, who got into dance after injuries plagued her foray into gymnastics, studied at Dance Spectrum. Staff members there remembered their fluidity, strength and jumps -- but mostly their attitude.

No matter how hard they toiled, instructor Alison O'Donnell said, "they were smiling from the minute they walked in to the minute they left."

Gail Florio, Dance Spectrum's director, said, "You can do all the right steps and be technically correct, but you also have to have something inside of you that relates to the audience. That makes you a performer; that's hard to teach."

Aminah packed her schedule during her junior and senior years.

"I would go to school, go to work, have track practice, go to dance classes, then work a weekend job, too. I was also teaching at the studio," she said. "Homework I just kind of threw in there somewhere."

To maintain that grueling pace, she said, you've got to love what you do. Making it in any profession takes "hard work and staying focused -- not straying from what you set out to do.

"There are so many people along the way who'll tell you, 'You can't,' just being negative. You have to have a strong sense of your self."

Both sisters credit their family and their Muslim faith for keeping them on track.

One person who supported their dream, Aminah said, was Vonnie Gaither, the career resource adviser at East High.

"She said, 'You need to dance, you need to pursue that,' " Aminah said, pointing out that few guidance counselors would even consider steering a student into the risky entertainment field.

"Everyone thinks they have what it takes to be a dancer or singer," Gaither said. "But when you saw those two dance, you could feel the happiness it brought them. I explained that anytime you go into the arts, it's difficult and competitive. But you could just tell from the amount of energy and the dedication that dancers were what they were supposed to be."

Like all mothers, Abdul-Halim harbored a few doubts at first, but she more than anyone understood the depth of her daughters' commitment. She took the two on trips to her native New York in 1994 and 1995 so they could experience the dance world beyond Alaska.

"Their plans were always to go to New York when they graduated high school," she said.

But plans changed.

The sisters traveled to Fairbanks in summer 1995 to learn from teachers brought up from the Lower 48. They bonded with Jason Myhre, an award-winning choreographer and instructor of jazz technique at the University of California Irvine as well as one of Los Angeles' top dance schools, Edge Performing Arts Studio. Myhre told them anytime they wanted to visit Southern California, they could stay with him and take a week of classes at Edge. The next year, the sisters hopped on a plane during spring break and ended up taking 30 Edge classes in one week.

"We were soooooo tired," Nafisa said.

Somehow, they shoehorned in another three classes at Tremaine Dance Center, which impressed the sisters with its "energy, the vibe," Nafisa said. "It was really comfortable. It reminded us of home."

A scholarship director there invited them to audition, but the Abdul-Jillils decided to wait till Aminah graduated so they could share the adventure. The siblings hoofed it down to Los Angeles in 1997, a month after East let out for the summer.

Their living arrangement helped a lot, Aminah said from their North Hollywood apartment, where the two still live together.

"Having family out here, having someone else when home is so far away. We lean on each other."

Two hundred women and as many men applied for 30 Tremaine scholarships one month after the girls came to California. After an all-day workout and interviews, the Alaskans snagged two of the coveted spots. They took 16 classes a week: "ballet every day, sometimes jazz, hip-hop, tap," Aminah said.

They had won a year's scholarship, but the dream lasted only three months, due to the school shutting down.

"We didn't want to tell our mother," Nafisa said. "We didn't want to freak her out. She was coming out to visit, so we didn't tell her till she got here."

Luckily, they had already landed at another school, one with a work-study program to cover fees. More important, they had hired an agent, who started sending them out on auditions. Jobs followed.

Over the past five years, the sisters have shimmied in many videos together -- Christina Aguilera's "What a Girl Wants," Mya's "Case of the Ex" -- as well as stage shows at various awards ceremonies -- behind Britney Spears at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, 'N Sync at the 2000 show. They even share a movie credit, "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas."

"It was so much fun," Nafisa said. "We got to dress up in animal-skin dresses. She had these branches and leaves in her hair. I had sticks."

Some of the moves seem downright suggestive, but that doesn't bother their mom: "It's all in the name of dance," Abdul-Halim said. "Dancing is an art."

Inevitably, perhaps, the pair's careers are beginning to diverge. Come December, Nafisa can be seen on the sixth episode of television's "girls club," which premieres at 8 p.m. Monday on Fox, Channel 4. Hired as a dancer, she caught the eye of a casting director who let her lip-sync as a backup vocalist behind a male lounge singer mounting a faux-Madonna tour.

Aminah, who's taking acting classes, will dance in two more movies: the Steve Martin film "Bringing Down the Houze," due in December, and "Malibu's Most Wanted," with Jamie Kennedy, out in the spring. A "Women of Dance" pictorial in the November issue of Sports Illustrated Women places her in the company of a Broadway dancer, a Vegas showgirl and a New York City Ballet member.

She also recently wrapped up a year of dancing behind Spears on the "Dream Within a Dream" tour.

Between 800 and 900 hopefuls auditioned for four male and four female spots. When Aminah landed one, she asked for the blessing of singer Willa Ford, with whom she was performing at the time.

"Willa was so sweet about it; she's so supportive," Aminah said. "She said, 'I know I could never give you a tour of that caliber.' "

Aminah toured the world behind the pop princess -- HBO captured the spectacle for a special, "Live From Las Vegas," and a subsequent concert DVD -- as well as appearing in the "I'm a Slave 4 U" video and Spears' decade-spanning Pepsi commercial, seen by millions during the Super Bowl.

Aminah was inspired by Spears, whom she called "sweet and humble." She said that the superstar toiled just as hard as her employees.

"When you're in rehearsal, everybody's working. She's learning just like we are. And she's good -- she works hard, and it shows."

One of the tour's choreographers was Wade Robson, known for his work with Michael Jackson. The sisters picked up some of his moves at Los Angeles' Millennium studio, where they take classes to this day.

"No matter how professional you get," said Nafisa, who's beginning to land modeling jobs, "there's always tons of stuff to learn."

The Abdul-Jillils plan a return to Alaska once their professional dancing days come to a close, though neither sees that happening anytime soon.

"We are serious about opening up a dance studio together in Anchorage," Nafisa said. "It's always been a dream of ours."

Aminah hopes to inspire small-town kids with big dreams.

"It doesn't matter where in the world you're from -- there will always be people who are passionate about whatever they're into who will work and work and work till they're personally satisfied."

Local free-lancer Warren Rhodes is a former Daily News entertainment staff writer






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