Dance has been a driving force in my life for 25 years. From music videos and hip hop, to jazz and musical theater, to ballet and classic modern dance, I have had extensive exposure to a variety of techniques that inspire my own electric style.
I attended Professional Children's School in Manhattan because my ballet and modern dance schedules were intensive and had started to interfere with regular school hours.
I was in the chorus in high school, not a soloist. I was on the basketball team. I was in modern dance, part of the group. I was a cheerleader, part of the group. I played the violin, part of the orchestra. I never wanted to be out there alone. Ever.
There's a style in modern dance right now called Release Technique. It's based on a feeling of falling and catching yourself, and I thought it was such a good metaphor for the way life feels.
The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It's a cornucopia of ways to move. There are choreographers in the company as - as diverse, as different from each other as Donald McKayle and Bill T. Jones, or Jawole Zollar and John Butler, Lar Lubovitch, you know, and Judith Jamison.
My background is in modern dance. I was a dancer and a choreographer before I was a director, and in dance, you can't cheat. Your leg goes up in the air, or it doesn't. So when I direct, I'm a big preparer.
If nobody comes to your shows, then it's modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don't know.
Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.
The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art.
The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity.
