My personal style at this point in my life is more audio; it's more driven on less visual and more musicality. But because of my upbringing, my fabulous mentors and teachers that I've had throughout my dance journey or career, I also possess a style that is of the past. It was just a matter of me reaching back.
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.
Movie making is such a long process, and they only use that one take, although you do it over and over about 30 times. Live theatre is that one time and one time only.
I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.
My mom couldn't afford dance shoes, so she put me in these old cowboy boots with a hard bottom so I could get some sound out. I used them for seven months. When I finally got real tap shoes, I was nervous. I kept moving my feet, thinking, 'Oh, so this is how it's supposed to sound.'
Authenticity is the most important thing. You have to know where it all comes from, study who pioneered it.
I don't like being too serious. I'm the type of person that, if the mike isn't in the right place when I go on, I just move it. Other people, they'll be all frantic. I'm more relaxed.
The spirituality of the dance, that's something that's evolved for me in the past ten years or so. I'm still trying to figure out where that's taking me.
I used to think I could save tap. But tap was here way before I was, and it's going to be here after I'm gone.
I go for a nice walk in my neighborhood and search for vinyl, old jazz, classics. Then I go home and listen to them.
Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.
I've never looked at what I do as show business, I guess, because of my connection to the art and how I was introduced to the dance.
I was very happy with the success of 'Noise/Funk,' but of course, there is a lot more that I have to say about the dance, about the history, about the people involved with the dance and their history.
I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap.