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.
I`m basically a hoofer, a tap dancer. I was always very good from the waist down, moving with the feet... I became what`s known as a total dancer, using the entire body in order to express what you want to express in tap dancing and line.
I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.
When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.
I started performing very young as a salsa dancer, and every time I was on that stage dancing, all I knew was that I wanted to speak. I wanted the music to stop, and I wanted to speak.
I actually was a ballet dancer - I studied ballet from three until 13 - but like very seriously, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a contemporary ballet dancer. I wanted to go to Juilliard.
I grew up in a very musical household. There was music and dance. My great-grandma was a famous tap dancer in the '40s, my mom was a dancer, she met my dad on the road when he was on tour in the '60s. Music is my heart and soul, it's my love.
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.
I am realizing and accepting my role as a tap dancer in this world is not only to tap dance for the sake of performance, but through tap dance be able to share and spread a message and congregate with people I would not necessarily be with had it not been for dance.
When I was very young I wanted to be an opera singer, a ballet dancer... The people I loved were a little different.
I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I was bad - I'm not very coordinated. But I always wished I could have been a dancer.
Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives, through adolescence, and while they are trying to work out who they are as people, never mind as a dancer. So train the whole person, not just the dancer.
A tap dancer is really a frustrated drummer.
I could have been a mediocre tap dancer.
I was a tap dancer as a child, so I understand precision and repetition.
I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.