The drive that spurred me on was not forced into me. It was never someone else’s dream. I didn’t have stereotypical stage parents pushing me to work, insisting I take class, telling me I needed to make something of myself. It was my own dream and I was fortunate that, although my parents had never been involved in the arts, they came along wholeheartedly for the ride.
* * *
I GREW UP in a typical suburban household. My mom and dad were hardworking Americans trying to create a harmonious home for me and my older brother, Brian. We lived first in the small town of Rapid City, South Dakota, where my parents owned three restaurants, all of which eventually closed. After that we moved to the suburbs of Minneapolis.
My mother went back to nursing and worked her way up the corporate ladder to become CEO of a hospital. She is a born leader, democratic and fair.
My dad had a number of professions: he was a clothing salesman, a food broker, a real estate agent, and finally the owner of a used appliance store. One thing I inherited from him was his visually creative sensibility, which you could witness throughout our houses. We lived in seven different ones over the course of my childhood. It wasn’t that we needed to move; my dad just got bored with spaces quickly and would seek out new renovation projects to tackle. Each of our homes was decorated with original taste and flair. My dad’s favorite hobby was to rearrange the furniture, and pieces would come in and out: couches, paintings, lamps, chairs, everything. It was a constant rotation to fit the mood of the month, coinciding with the changing color of paint on the walls, which went from eggplant to burgundy to azure to gold.
On weekends he blasted loud music throughout the house, anything from Dire Straits to Beethoven. My mother loved it; my brother and I tolerated it.
Brian and I were polar opposites from the starting line. Very close in age, we fought constantly. He had little tolerance for my annoyances, which made me enjoy them even more. I knew exactly how to make him explode. My favorite way was to sing a song. He would then ask me to stop. I’d hum a few more notes.
He’d look at me contemptuously and say, “I asked you to stop singing.”
“I had to finish my song,” I’d reply.
When I had exhausted his patience he would punch me and I would cower away in tears. We each had our own ammunition. I would annoy. He would hit.
* * *
MINE WAS A true American childhood, at least for a while. In the first years of elementary school I went to classes, came home, did my homework, and played with friends in the backyard, riding my bike with a pack of other kids, building forts with them in the woods. Summer evenings were idyllic, long events when we would run all over the neighborhood until the escaping sun put an end to that day’s activities.
All of that was changed one evening by a mysterious man gliding across our TV screen. His name was Fred Astaire. His talent and effortless charisma ignited a flashing spark within me. I stared at the screen, unsure of what he was doing but certain of its significance. I was mesmerized. I wanted to be him. Move the way he moved. He skimmed across the stage smoothly, calmly, effortlessly. It was so clear to me that that was what I wanted to do.
Fred’s dancing was the birth of it all for me. He became an obsession. With that obsession came the vision of myself dancing. Jumping, turning, gliding across the floor. Dance is a force that has always been stronger than myself. Even when I was eight years old, that force pulled me into its world. I knew nothing about it but wanted to know everything. And from that moment of seeing Fred on the screen, dance has stayed with me every day of my life.
* * *
I BEGAN DANCING in my family’s basement in Minneapolis, in the long rectangular laundry room, which had a door that closed off the music and noise. I started alone: no class, no peers, just me on the cold concrete floor next to the washer and dryer and shelves of detergent and bleach, lightbulbs hanging over me.
For tap shoes, I had my Sunday-school penny loafers, some duct tape, and a handful of nickels from my mom. I looped the duct tape around to make double-sided tape and stuck it to the bottoms of the shoes. I carefully lined up the nickels one by one, row by row, and affixed them to the soles and the heels. I had tap shoes.
The nickels were heavier than pennies and made more noise, replicating (to my naive standard) the tapping sounds Fred’s shoes made on the TV. I paced back and forth, alone in the laundry room, making up the steps as I saw fit. No technique, no names for steps, just the joy of moving and the sound my feet made when I struck them on the concrete.
As Halloween approached, I pulled together what was then my sartorial ideal: a bowler hat, a white shirt, and black pants. And my makeshift tap shoes. I was officially Fred, if only for a day.
Dancing came to me naturally. Like eating or sleeping, it felt like second nature. It was simply a part of me. I answered its call because I had no other choice. Ignoring it wasn’t an option. The force was too great. I never imagined in those early days that dancing would become my profession. I didn’t even know that dancing was a profession. I just knew I had to do it.
* * *
WHEN CHRISTMAS ROLLED around, my parents got me a pair of proper tap shoes. It was by far the most exciting gift under the tree. Even better than the Nintendo that Brian and I had begged them for.
Opening that rectangular package, seeing the red shoe box and, inside it, the black patent leather Capezios, was the official starting point. No more nickels on the bottoms of my penny loafers, but true sound, from true shoes. No more imitating Fred, but being Fred.
My parents enrolled me in an after-school tap program. Once a week, a noncommittal forty-five minutes, just a class where I could express my desire to dance with like-minded kids.
I could not have pursued that desire without my parents’ support. They had no idea where it would lead. They didn’t know if I had “talent.” All they wanted to do was show their love for their son and help him fulfill his desire to dance like Fred. From the very start, they were on board, never asking me if I wanted to play T-ball like the other boys. They took the road that parents often do not take. I hear frequently from young boys who have the exact passion I had when I was their age. They just have to move. They fall in love with dancing, with its beauty and athleticism and rigor. But their parents think a dancing boy does not fit society’s norm, the role of a normal boy. They don’t want their kid to endure the pains of teasing and being the outcast. They figure sports are the better option. The road more traveled.
I understand the predicament parents face when their son wants to do something they know nothing about and no other boy in their neighborhood is doing. But kids’ natural inclinations are what they are. When I played sports I would make excuses to go to the bathroom in the middle of games, my disinterest showing in my lack of motivation. I knew these sports—soccer, baseball, basketball—weren’t for me. But dance was my outlet, my purpose, my joy. And my parents could see that in me. Which is exactly why they nurtured it.
How lucky I was that my parents chose to help me pursue what made me blissfully happy. That it didn’t matter to them that my happiness started with putting on tap shoes and eventually led to ballet shoes and tights.
* * *
THE FIRST PERSON to teach me proper dancing technique was a tapper named Maxine Vashro. She was a spitfire, energetic and lively. Her class was held in the basement of the local community college. Maxine would demonstrate and we would follow: shuffle, ball change, flap (learning it sounds more like fa-lap, striking the floor twice). Then picking up the pace, flap ball change, shuffle ball change, flap heel, all in repetition. I remember the students going “across the floor” one by one, and seeing my reflection in the mirror as I made my way. I was not terribly focused at the beginning. I was still a kid who liked to hang with neighborhood friends, and at times I would call my mom at work to ask her if I “have to go to tap today.”
Nevertheless, my interest grew into intense fascination. I would show people my tapping skills without apprehension or self-consciousness. When I was at the grocery store, I would tap down the long aisles, a perfect length of space to try newly invented moves. I was never ashamed of or embarrassed by what I wanted to do. I never felt I needed to hide it or lie to friends about what I was doing after school. It came so naturally to me that I naively assumed everyone had a similar desire and passion.
My third-grade crush was a girl named Amanda. To express my devoted affection I gave her a photo of myself dancing in the basement. It was maybe a tad unique to give my crush a picture of myself tapping away, arms swung to one side of my body, smiling at the camera. Unfortunately, my little present provoked a mildly horrified response from her and her friends.
* * *
I QUICKLY CAUGHT on that the boys in my class didn’t approve of my passion. But it was hard to understand why they wanted to pick on me. A couple of them would regularly chase me around the classroom and act as though they were going to do something far worse. I was never a kid who fought back, nor did my dad ever give me that traditional talk: “Stand up for yourself, boy. Come on, punch me! Let’s see what you got!”
So when bullies approached me, I had no idea what to do. My instinctive reaction when facing danger is to run, and I did exactly that. It didn’t work. I suppose I could have just ignored them, but it’s different in the moment when you’re a little kid being taunted by your contemporaries. They seemed to get pleasure out of my inability to fight back.
I just wanted to fit in. Like every kid, I wanted to be accepted by my peers. But there was a fundamental difference that made me a target. A weak target, at that. I was effeminate. I wasn’t wearing sparkly shoes and prancing around the classroom (which is perfectly acceptable)—I was just different. My best friends were girls. I could always hang out with them more easily than with boys. I had a constant flow of girl friends, so many that my fourth-grade teacher took me aside one day and said they were distracting me from my schoolwork. Other boys would be trying to gain attention from the girls, and I was seen as the effeminate roadblock to their desires. They didn’t want me in their way.
* * *
TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK came once a year, and while other students dutifully wrote to teachers they liked, I used the opportunity to write to the school counselor and let him know I was being harassed daily by a group of persistent classmates.
Though I needed to share what was happening, being forthcoming with that information made me feel even more vulnerable. Next thing I knew, I was in the counselor’s office giving the names of my taunters. Then my parents were called in. They wanted to take me to a child psychiatrist who could teach me how to deal with bullies. I told them I didn’t want to go, but they insisted, saying it would do me good to “just talk about what was bothering me.” I could tell it killed them to know I was being demoralized by other kids.
A week later, despite my protests, I walked into the psychiatrist’s office in a high-rise building in downtown Minneapolis. I hated the idea of talking about an emotional issue for which I wasn’t even seeking advice. The thought of verbalizing my problems to an adult made me feel even weaker, like I couldn’t do anything myself.
Despite my reluctance, we finally spoke about what was happening at school. The psychiatrist suggested I develop an alter ego who could help me stick up for myself. We named him “Tough Tom.” The idea was that, when the bullies started to go at me, I would somehow work up the confidence to become my trusty and stronger other self. But Tom turned out to be less than trusty, because when I was being verbally assaulted I couldn’t convince myself that an imaginary character would help me in any way.
The teasing followed me to Phoenix, Arizona, when my parents relocated there for work. It was an exciting move for a now ten-year-old boy, a fresh start and, potentially at least, a chance to make new friends.
I picked out my outfit for my first day of fifth grade. I was like every other kid, making a personal statement for the start of the school year. The prospect of new school clothes and the chance to show them off was thrilling. I chose a black T-shirt, black-and-white-checkered flannel shorts, and my favorite, coolest item: red high-top Converse sneakers, paired with white tube socks. As I walked to my classroom, some boys barked, “Nice shoes!” It stung.
After that the teasing escalated. It confounded me. I was just being myself. I couldn’t act another way or put on another face. And I still couldn’t stand up to them. It wasn’t in my nature. I cowered in front of the bullies. It hurt to be made fun of and all I wanted when it was happening was to get away from it. Yet as much as I wanted to escape, I also wanted to fit in.
* * *
IN PHOENIX, THE pinnacle of my entire week was the dance class I began taking at a local jazz studio. With more formal training, I mustered up the courage to audition for my school talent show. A lot of kids would sing, some would dance, others did magic tricks or gymnastics. I was the only boy dancing. I didn’t want to be teased, but when it came to dancing, I took every opportunity to do so, even if the entire student body would be watching and judging me. I decided on a few routines I had been working on at the studio: a tap solo, a jazz routine to an early nineties dance anthem, “The Hitman,” and a top-hat-and-tails tap dance to “Sing Sing Sing.” I was focused and nervous auditioning in front of my music teacher, Mr. Bernstein. I took my dances very seriously, so I was anxious while waiting to hear whether I made it into the show, and full of joy and excitement when I did.
It took some courage to dance in the talent show. But I didn’t see it as such. Every student set himself up for massacre when he went out on that stage in front of his or her peers.
As I sat in the music room with the other kids, each one nervously awaiting his or her turn to go on, Mr. Bernstein came over to me and sat down.
“You must follow your passion to dance, David,” he said. “Ignore the nastiness and the teasing heaped on you by other kids. All you need to do is explore your love of dance.”
Never before had someone suggested that I had something worth nurturing. At the time I simply listened, nodded, and then went onstage to perform my routine. But that was the first bit of encouragement I received. I’ll always be grateful to him, for he was the first to instill in me the crucial idea that anyone—even a tap-dancing boy in suburban America—has the right to follow his dreams.