People misconstrue when I say I was a dancer. I was not classically trained. I was a street dancer, and I got to do what I did in the nightclubs of New York City.
I originally wanted to be a ballet dancer and trained for years, but when I was around 18, I realized I wasn't going to be as good a ballet dancer as I'd hoped I'd be and decided to become an actress instead.
If I was trained as a dancer then I probably would have been a dancer, and I'm not.
A good dancer is not necessarily defined by great technique, skill, or ability to pick up choreography but by confidence. When you feel the music, it penetrates to your soul. Everybody's a dancer. The greatest dancer is someone who is willing to dance, not afraid.
My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.
Forget the dancer, the center of the ego. Become the dance. Then the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. Then the dancer is the dance. There is no dancer separate from dance, no dance separate from the dancer.
People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.
I consider myself an actress first, a dancer second, and a singer third. Why? Because the dancer needs a reason to move-that's the actor informing the dancer. So I worked on my acting and gradually developed a singing voice.
Bubbles was a very good dancer. Tremendous dancer. He was one of our leading dancers of the country at that time. And, of course, he didn't have much of a voice.
I taught and studied dance in college, and for over a decade, I thought that would be my career: tap dancer, ballet dancer, modern dancer. I still find myself doing some tumbling or interpretive dancing in the grocery store every now and then.
As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else - I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.
I like to say, 'Once a dancer, always a dancer.' In everything - the way you walk, the way you move, the way you talk, the way you sit - everything is just, you've been trained a certain way your whole life, so it's a bit muscle memory.
I'm a tap dancer. Once you're a tap dancer, you're always a tap dancer. In 'After Midnight,' I get to dance, but I don't do a full tap number.
What I found interesting in dance is the idea that my work has always been dealing with the nervousness between the human subject as a subject and the human subject as a form. And if you look at my dance films, there are always these cuts between the dancer as a form, the dancer as a subject, and this kind of very harsh treatment of the dancer as someone who's actually drawing with their body.
For me, a dancer is part of an artist’s entertainment - “backup dancer” isn’t even in my vocabulary.
For me, a dancer is part of an artist's entertainment - 'backup dancer' isn't even in my vocabulary.