I started salsa dancing with a few different companies and started touring the country. It was fantastic, but I realized that I really wanted to talk every time we were performing. That's a problem because when you're dancing, if you stop to talk, that's not really cool to the other dancers.
If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.
Music came first and I started to jam with people I couldn't communicate in their language. Then, because I could make friends thanks to music, they started to talk to me. Then I started to learn English.
With actors and directors, it's a conversation that you have. You have to learn each other's language and learn how to communicate with each other effectively. It's really nice when you can have that communication on a level where they walk up to you and you can see by the expression on their face what they want. You don't even have to talk, it just like, "Got it!" And, you know what they want before they even ask for it.
You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.
I was shy at dancing. I practice at home. I was practicing in the mirror. Dancing everywhere. Then I just started feeling good. I started feeling coordinated. I started feeling the music better.
I don't remember not dancing. When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance.
I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the water joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
The last time I had PMS a roast chicken popped out of the oven and danced the Macarena.Krebs had walked in just as the chicken started dancing. By then he was pretty much used to anything and only asked if the chicken shouldn’t be doing the Chicken Dance instead.
I just have to live my truth and know that it's okay to rock on my own vibration, because I'm me. I try to stand by that code, especially as a young Black woman in this industry. I try to walk the walk and talk the talk.
Women, as well as men, in all ages and in all places, have danced on the earth, danced the life dance, danced joy, danced grief, danced despair, and danced hope. Literally and metaphorically, by their very lives.
For me, it was always survival. Learn where not to be at so you don't get shot. Learn where not to walk at so you don't get jumped. Learn who to stand up to, who not to stand up to. And then, when I got old enough to get a chip on my shoulder, I wanted to be the dog. I wanted to be the alpha.
But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.
I wish everyday could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.
I started singing when I was about 3 and dancing soon after. Mom just started looking for outlets where I could perform and availed herself of any opportunity she could in the mountains of North Carolina in the '70s.