Faculty member Jonathan Sharp is currently choreographing the USC School of Theatre’s production of Carousel, which debuts at Bing Theatre on April 3, but this is hardly his first go around with the show.

In 1994, he danced the role of Fairground Boy in the Royal National Theatre’s Tony-winning revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic at Lincoln Center.

“It was my first principal contract,” he said. “It was just a life experience that does something for your confidence. It does something for how you see yourself. You know, I made it to New York, and I made it in a show, and that show went all the way to the top. We sang at the Tonys!”

Sharp made his debut in his home state of Mississippi at the age of 5, when his teacher announced that his choir would only be performing one song at the Christmas pageant because they hadn’t learned the words to the second one.

“I lifted my hand and said, ‘I know the words. I’ll sing it,’ ” Sharp recalled. “And so lo and behold, they propped me up next to the microphone by myself, and I sang ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ The muses of art were already like, ‘Oh yeah, we have a live one!’ ”

That was the beginning of a decades-long career spanning everything from professional ballet and Broadway musicals to television.

Sharp was performing with the Los Angeles Opera when USC’s director of dance Margo Apostolos came to interview him and the other performers for a dance therapy program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

When Sharp learned that a position was open at the university, he leapt at the chance and joined the faculty last September. Three months later, he signed on to choreograph USC’s production of Carousel, the show that had been so instrumental in launching his own performing career.

“Jonathan is a wonderful and skilled teacher and a wonderful mentor to young talent,” said Carousel director Jack Rowe, who is an associate dean and artistic director of the School of Theatre.

“As a premiere ballet dancer and a veteran of the musical theatre, Jonathan brings a lovely mix of classical technique and theatrical sensibility to his choreography. He also thinks of dance and movement in terms of story,” Rowe said. “His theatrical sense complements greatly my tendency to austereness.”

Sharp values his collaboration with Rowe as well as with the talented students who comprise the cast.

“Especially at this age, I want to challenge them, but I also want to build their confidence,” he said. “It’s always great when we’re working on something, and there’s that giggle of like, ‘We got it!’

“The cast is absolutely fabulous. They’re unbelievably respectful, and they’ve all worked really hard. Each and every one of them has brought something unique and wonderful to the show. It’s really going to be a patchwork quilt of these beautiful people performing on stage.”