Success is the best revenge, says South Florida native Brandon Bryant, 20.

``I was taunted all through middle school. They told me `you're so gay' because I was in dance,'' he said of the bullies he encountered at Southwood Middle in Palmetto Bay.

But the lifelong dance enthusiast has had the last laugh.

On Friday, scores of children, teens and adults gathered at Miami Dade College's Kendall Campus to see and meet Bryant, who reached second place in Season 5 of the popular Fox show, So You Think You Can Dance.

Bryant studied dance at the campus for a year before joining the Odyssey Dance Theater in Salt Lake City. He is a graduate of Coral Reef High.

After the kids rushed at him to get his autograph, the young star beamed. ``Now the people who bullied me are calling me up and trying to be all friendly. Well, I don't think so,'' he said with a laugh.

The audience went wild after Bryant, clad only in a pair of white shorts, performed a routine of high-energy kicks, leaps and contortions set to O, Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

His performance to a cover version of Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror got the dancer a deafening standing ovation from the audience, composed largely of children enrolled in the college's summer camp.

When the song ended, Bryant took a flying leap off the stage, dancing his way to where his parents, Carlton and Sherlin Bryant, sat. He wrapped his mother in a tight embrace before hauling himself back onstage.

``Even if he didn't have music, it would have been beautiful,'' said Kendall Campus music professor Rodester Brandon of Bryant's routines.

A question-and-answer period followed the dance interlude.

``I'm moving to L.A.,'' he said in response to Briar Bay-area resident Katrina Bumpers' question about what's next for him.

Bryant said he has received an offer to dance backup for pop singer Lady Gaga and is in talks to sign up with an agent and manager.

``Right now I'm trying to shoot for movies,'' he told the audience.

Sophia Carballo, 12, who held a poster board inscribed with the words ``Go Brandon,'' told him he's her idol, and asked him about how celebrity has changed his life.

``Oh, snap!'' Bryant exclaimed, using one of his favorite expressions. ``You don't expect to get so much attention. It's been crazy. People stop me on the street and tell me `Oh, you look so familiar.''

His itch to dance began when he was about 8, when the back-up dancers in a Britney Spears video knocked him for a loop.

``I tried playing football and baseball but finally I had to tell my parents, I just want to dance,'' he said. ``The support from them has really helped me.''

Sherlin Bryant described the feeling she got during the last few minutes of the show before the winner was announced.

``I had butterflies in my stomach and my heart was pounding,'' she said. ``I get the butterflies whenever I see him onstage. I also scream, cheer, holler, whatever there is, I do it.''

Like the show's winner, Ransom Everglades graduate Jeanine Mason of Pinecrest, Bryant now is a celebrity who, according to his dance teacher and mentor, Michelle Grant-Murray, is headed for bigger things.

``He is so hard-working and completely humble, one of the most talented and inspirational people I know,'' said Murray, who studied at New World School of the Arts and Jacksonville University. She eventually joined New York's Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

``It was amazing to see the physical manifestation of all the work, all the prayers, all the talks, all the technique classes,'' Murray said of Bryant's work on the show, comparing the teaching process to gardening.

``You go out, you plant it, you nurture it, and at the end you've got a beautiful fruit,'' she said.

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