A Quote by Michael K. Williams
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.
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I trained as a dancer and did all that kind of stuff. And as a dancer, pressure's a good thing.
My whole family is in the arts some way or the other. My father was a cellist in a symphony outside Chicago that was a side-job, he was a scientist. My mother was a dancer in New York. She was next-door neighbors with Dorothy Loudon and they moved to New York together. Mom was a dancer in New York for several years before she got married. My sister was a classical pianist. And my brother was a partier. So it all just seemed to work.
You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph.
If I was trained as a dancer then I probably would have been a dancer, and I'm not.
Whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror. Where I used to practice in New York City, there was a mirror so you could actually watch yourself skate. And nowadays my golf teacher will film me swinging so I can see what I am doing. Having looked first at myself and my own body for so long as one does as a dancer and a skater, it was so natural to do fashion.
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.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
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 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.
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.
I will say, though, that San Francisco is a very friendly city. It's the kind of place where people smile at you and you can strike up conversations on the street, so there's always an adjustment when I come back to New York. If I smile at someone on the street in New York, then they think there's something up - like, "Why is she smiling?"
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.
Before I was an actor I was a break dancer, one of those street performers you see. I guess my introduction into the professional world of performing was a stint as back up dancer for Lionel Richie and I performed at the closing ceremony at the '84 Olympics.
The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.
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.
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