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.
What does genius mean? God has put us here specifically... every person has a job or journey to do. It's just a matter of finding what we're here to fulfill or execute. That's genius to me.
I realized early on, I'm more interested in Baryshnikov than some dancer who wants to do a rock show with ballet.
I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don't get into a position where they're saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died.
There's a tendency to think tap's had its day, but 'Happy Feet' kept us in the race. That penguin is our Shirley Temple.
Whether it is Jimmy Slyde or Lon Chaney or Gregory Hines, their dance shows what they experienced, what they had to go through.
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 never really stop and think about should I put my hat on this way or that, not thinking that little JoJo down the street would be copying that. I'm more conscious about it now and tell the kids that it's not about the shoes or what kind of shoes... it's all about the dance.
For me, the importance in learning about the dance is using it as a voice. It's not about a step, it's about a way to express oneself.
There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.
They're taking away the arts programmes in the schools, and that's a terrible thing.
I want to entertain, but I'm interested in a whole range of feelings.
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.'
I try new stuff every time I perform. I have steps I do that I know are definite, and stuff I can make up right then and there and then forget.
I was a drummer in a group called Three Plus. We were performing at a club in New York, and my mother signed me up for tap classes. I fell in love from the door... so you can blame it on my mother.
When Puffy asked me to do the video, I said yes. Cuz it's all about the Benjamins!
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 always had me and my brother watching old Fred Astaire movies.
I love riding my ATV 450.
Tap's foundation is jazz, just like hip-hop, so relating tap-dancing to rap is natural for me.
