When I was 12, I was doing competitive jazz, tap and ballet in Michigan. The studio put the best dancers together, and I joined that. We always did really, really well in local competitions.
I was really creative. I started to dance very young. I loved to dance. I begged my mother to put me into dance classes, and finally, in third grade, she did. Tap and jazz, but not ballet.
I started with ballet, and once I started to really like it, I got into more - I did jazz and tap, and then kept going.
When I was in New York, I put together a show; I put together this really great band and performed at this place called Littlefield in Brooklyn. It was really fun. I did, like, 10 standards, and then I just hopped around different bars like Mona's and different jazz clubs in New York just singing because I know all the standards so well.
I'm not fond of the idea of doing ballet for ballet's sake, because dancers get exploited and they're not paid well. They do it for the love.
I feel like people used to leave their homes and go to their local theatre, and they used to watch ballet dancers and musical theatre performers and tap dancers and orchestras and dog acts. You had to leave your home, be in the presence of other people, know how to behave, and enjoy the human being whose beating heart was in front of you.
I did ballet, tap, jazz, modern, I taught dance here in my hometown of St. Louis.
I grew up doing tap, jazz, and ballet, so I understand rhythm and movement and performing.
I did tap dancing and stuff like that at drama school. I did ballet as well. My dance teacher and I didn't necessarily get along all that well sometimes. She's brilliant... but it's just because I don't like wearing tights that I put up a bit of a fight there, I think.
I had danced with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy so I had done a bunch of hip hop. Really and truly my roots are in modern and ballet but, professionally, that's not really out there any more, unfortunately, so these artists aren't really having a lot of ballet dancers behind them so I had to learn hip hop really quick.
So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit of classical in there. I mean, a true contemporary dancer has got ballet as their base and classical ballet, and that is their base. And then they choose to extemporize on that and go into a contemporary world.
I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition.
Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still.
I do ballet and pointe work. I also do tap, commercial jazz and technical jazz, freestyle street dancing.
Yeah, I grew up doing ballet and jazz and tap, but I stopped at the age of 25, and I've never stepped foot in a ballroom.
I don't really have a career as a jazz musician. I don't really have a career as a classical musician. I don't really have a career as a college professor, and yet I did all those things and I did them well. I put out some records in the 1980's and 1990's that changed the way some trumpet players played.
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.