As a professional ballet dancer, I have to accept that weekends are about work. The notion of a leisurely break with all the buzz and excitement of a Friday night simply doesn't exist for me.
It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays.
I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me.
Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of Las Vegas by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who insists, violently, on being addressed as 'Ben.'
I came from the musical stage. My first show was '110 In The Shade.' I started as a ballet dancer and then sort of gravitated toward musical theater, so any time I got asked to sing or dance, it was a joy for me.
The best gift I was ever given was the arts. My mum gave me those on a silver platter. Growing up, her and my grandmother would take me to ballets, classical concerts, even smoky jazz clubs I wasn't supposed to be in!
I remember that my mother used to take me to see ballets, especially if there were black people in them.
To me the most important thing was stirring things up and scoring some runs so we could win a ballgame.
I'm so happy in the projects that I'm able to make, to be involved in projects like this. This isn't always where it was at for me, I started working when I was a kid. I'm just a different person now, I'm 30. I started working when I was 11 and it's a different ballgame.
When I grew up on the south side of Chicago, it was kind of a rough neighborhood, and when my parents saw the prospect of my older sister going to middle school, high school, they decided that we would move to the north side of Chicago, Highland Park, and for me, that was a whole new ballgame.
My mother praised me when I did something good, and then the next moment, she would say, 'Don't float.' She put me in a balloon and then pricked it.
There are several drugs out right now that can't stop multiple sclerosis, but they can slow it way down. They also made me puff up like a balloon. So I looked horrible. I hated that.
'House of Balloons' was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.
I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.
One time, when I was about eight, these guys started throwing water balloons at me. That really did ruin my summer.
In a way, I'm always working with Mick Jones. I feel like he's watching over me all the time. We talk about everything: history quite a lot. Balloons and wars and old football players. The Clash.
When my life is stressful, my favorite game is called 'Pop It,' where you pop balloons and prizes fall out. It's a five-minute game that focuses my mind and gives me extra attention when I'm stressed.
You're not going to get a chance to vote for me on the ballot, but you can actually vote for what I believe in.
I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, so I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.
I don't doubt a number of those ballots, of those votes that were cast for me, probably were intended for Vice President Gore.
