Latest / The Philip Ryan Deal Podcast / My Dance Career Part One: The First Decade

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My Dance Career Part One: The First Decade · The Philip Ryan Deal Podcast

0:07
What's up my, which bitches? It's Philip deal here to give
0:13
you a new podcast. I know you're super excited
0:17
because I haven't podcasted in like a couple of weeks but you
0:21
know how I am. I'll I spread myself around, I
0:25
spread myself around, you know, I just can't sit still, I'm all
0:30
over. Over the place.
0:30
I'm on YouTube. I've got a mother fucking
0:33
awesome YouTube channel. It's everything.
0:38
I just spent time transferring over old VHS tapes and
0:43
converting them to digital format so that I could upload
0:46
them to YouTube. So All of You Could See Me
0:48
dance, I have posted Philip deal.
0:51
Dancer videos from 1991 to 2021, ain't that some shit.
0:57
That's three motherfucking decades.
1:00
Me dancing. Entertaining people.
1:05
Oh, so guess what? We are going to be talking about
1:08
my dance career. This is all about my dance
1:12
career. You're just going to have to
1:13
listen to me rant and talk about my life, as a dancer as a
1:19
choreographer and all of all of my Adventures because I mean, 30
1:27
years of dance, it's actually longer than 30 years because
1:32
even though I posted a video that Comes from 1991.
1:35
I have a video that comes from like, 1990 could even be like,
1:44
1988 video of me as a kid, could not find.
1:48
It went through all of the VHS tapes that my dad gave to me.
1:54
I had a friend go over to my parents house and collect all of
1:57
my VHS tapes, and dance stuff because I woke up mad.
2:02
I woke up my My mad one day and I texted my dad, I'm like, I
2:06
want my shit. You know, me and my parents have
2:09
this horrible relationship. We've been disconnected from one
2:14
another for about 20 years, so we don't communicate, but I
2:18
said, I want my shit. God damn it.
2:20
Give me my stuff, if it has my face on it, if it has my name on
2:24
it, I want. Those are my things they belong
2:28
to me. So my dad gave it to my friend
2:31
Lisa, and then in turn, Lisa gave it to me.
2:36
So, I've got all these Dance videos, not all of the videos
2:39
that I want. There's actually more videos
2:42
coming in the future because I'm going to be driving down to
2:47
Virginia Beach at some point in time and going over to one of
2:52
one of the choreographer company directors that I used to dance
2:57
for. She's got all these DVDs.
2:59
Dee's of dance performances. I did with her like in the late,
3:03
late 90s early 2000s. Oh my God, I'm so old I'm so old
3:13
and I was sitting here, I'm laughing at, I'm in a good mood
3:16
because I'm sitting here, I'm sipping, my coffee, I'm waiting
3:18
for my morning shit to hit because, you know, that's going
3:21
to happen at some point in time and I'm over here, I'm sitting
3:27
here, I'm trying to have my coffee And I'm trying to write
3:30
down on a piece of paper. All of the things that I want to
3:33
talk about like my dance career like from the beginning and I'm
3:36
like, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to talk about all of
3:38
this stuff in one episode. Why did I think I could talk
3:41
about my 30-year dance, career in one episode.
3:46
So we're gonna, we're gonna take a little break.
3:50
I have, I, I had a cold, I've gotten over a cold.
3:53
I had some kind of flu thing, didn't go down into my chest,
3:57
that's because I knocked it out with all.
3:59
All the herbs and all the garlic and all the ginger and all the
4:03
tea and and and go into the steam room and the sauna and
4:07
sweating it out, you know. So I might sound a little
4:10
congested, but I always sell sound congested.
4:14
I'm really excited. I'm really excited to talk to
4:17
you guys today. So what I'm going to do is I'm
4:20
going to get a refill on my coffee.
4:22
I'm going to take my morning shit, I'm ready to tell you
4:25
everything about my dance career starting from the very very very
4:30
beginning. And I hope that you stick around
4:33
and I hope that you enjoy. I hope that you enjoy today's
4:37
podcast, all right? Bend over.
4:41
Grab your ass cheeks everybody. Spread them wide because Is,
4:44
Here Comes Philip deal. Alright, so here we go.
4:57
I got to mentally prepare myself for all of this information that
5:00
I'm going to share. I don't want to forget anything
5:02
important. So, we need to go back to the
5:06
beginning. I actually started taking ballet
5:11
tap and gymnastics when I was like four years old. 45 years
5:18
old. Maybe it, maybe it was more
5:22
like, yeah, it was like five, five or six because I remember
5:27
that my family got into a very very bad car, wreck a very bad
5:32
accident. When I was about five six years
5:35
old, that prevented me from continuing, to take my dance
5:38
classes for several years and then I picked it back up when I
5:43
was about eight years old. So there was like a two or
5:46
three-year period of time that I didn't dance because my family I
5:51
went through this huge traumatic event, it was totally
5:54
traumatizing to me. Briefly, what I'll tell you
5:57
about that accident is we had we had friends down from New York
6:04
This older, man, and his wife who were Jehovah's Witnesses.
6:09
That came down from New York, from Brooklyn Bethel, which was
6:15
the headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses at the time and they
6:18
would come down and they would vacation in Virginia Beach and
6:21
they would stay with us with my mom and my dad.
6:24
For some reason, they all got along and they would come down
6:27
every summer. Well, this particular summer, we
6:30
had gone out. We went to the beach.
6:31
We had got hot dogs. And then we started driving
6:37
home. My parents had this massive van.
6:40
You remember, those huge Vans they used to have an 80s
6:44
completely decked out, you know, with captains chairs and like a
6:47
sofa in the back and a little table.
6:53
Well, what had happened was we got hit by a drunk driver
6:59
broadside that ran through a red light.
7:02
This was in Virginia Beach Virginia.
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On Princess Anne Road. If you know where that is, we
7:07
got hit broadside and it was, it was a horrible wreck.
7:11
I actually got thrown forward. I was not wearing a seat belt
7:14
because back then nobody really. Nobody really wore seat belts,
7:20
or cared that much about seat belts or putting kids, in seat
7:23
belts, And I got thrown forward. And when I got thrown forward in
7:28
this wreck, I went hurtling through the air and my
7:31
grandmother, who was in the front left.
7:33
Captain's chair in the back, landed on me, she fell on me.
7:38
And when she fell on me, it prevented me from flying all the
7:41
way through the van and hitting the windshield with my head.
7:48
But she damaged, my hip. I came out of the accident
7:54
pretty unscathed. As far as injuries are
7:57
concerned, but I suffered severe.
7:58
Post-traumatic stress disorder as a child from being in that
8:02
accident. It's deeper than that.
8:04
They couldn't get us out of the van.
8:08
They had to pry. The van open, everybody in the
8:10
car was bleeding and and screaming and crying.
8:14
It was just a horrible situation for me as a kid.
8:18
But I survived that. And I want to go back to the
8:24
very first dance studio. I want to give all credit to an
8:28
older woman who probably is not alive any longer.
8:32
God bless her soul. Her name was least Knitter.
8:35
I'll never forget. Miss Lis Knitter.
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When I was like 4 or 5 years old, I started taking ballet
8:42
Actually not tapped. I don't think I did tap.
8:45
I'm sorry. I lied.
8:47
My see false memory false memory.
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It was ballet. And gymnastics, I took ballet
8:52
classes, from an older lady named lease Knitter at some
8:56
place. I think it was called like the
8:58
Ballet Academy are the ballet studio or the ballet school is
9:02
like the most generic name that you could pick for a dance
9:04
studio and she taught there, it was close to my grandmother's
9:08
house and I would take classes there.
9:11
I really really I loved it, I loved dancing twirling around,
9:15
it was just my favorite thing. They put me in gymnastics too.
9:18
But I remember for a fact that I hated the gymnastics and so I
9:22
didn't do it. I would like cry and go sit in
9:24
the corner. So my parents took me out of the
9:26
gymnastics part but I kept doing the ballet because that was
9:29
something I enjoyed to do. That was the very, very
9:34
beginning I have Very faint memories or Recollections of
9:42
being in those dance classes. But I do remember Miss Lisa,
9:46
Knitter and her beautiful smiling face.
9:48
She was so kind and yeah, so that's how I started out my
9:54
parents. My mother of course.
9:58
Which I've talked about in other podcasts, had a very strong
10:03
desire for me to be artistic in nature.
10:06
So what she did is she put me into a whole bunch of little
10:10
little kid classes, like piano little kids acting classes.
10:21
Ballet and some other activities that had to do with like the
10:26
Arts and the Performing Arts and things like that, she wanted me
10:29
to have culture. And also it was something that
10:32
my mom was really really into that she didn't get to do as a
10:35
little girl. So obviously there was some kind
10:38
of You know living vicariously through your child.
10:42
Kind of thing. Ain't the thing which is not
10:45
bad. I don't think it's wrong.
10:46
I don't think it's wrong to vicariously live through your
10:50
kids as long as you know you're fucking boundaries like if you
10:53
always wanted to dance you never did you put your kids in dance
10:56
and they excel at it? Obviously you're going to be
10:59
proud of them and you're going to be like, yeah I know they got
11:01
the dance for me although I never got to do it.
11:04
Like they did, you know I love watching them.
11:06
That's healthy. That's a healthy way of
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vicariously. Living through your kids.
11:10
Anything. Other than that, like these
11:12
dance State, what do they call them Dan?
11:15
The Dance Moms? Yeah, the Dance Moms.
11:21
We'll talk about those kind of people at another time.
11:24
Crazy, women. Oh my God!
11:26
Everybody thinks their kid is a princess.
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I swear to God, when I was growing up, every one of those
11:31
bitches thought that their little girl was like a princess,
11:34
and everyone was always fighting.
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Oh, there are always fighting to be number one.
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Everybody wanted to be the The best, you know?
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And that's the kind of environment I grew up in.
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I grew up in an environment that was highly competitive where
11:49
everybody wanted to be the best. So excuse me, we had the
11:57
accident. And after the accident it was
12:00
about a year two years. And then my parents decided to
12:04
put me back into dance. This time my parents put me into
12:09
a school named dance. Land.
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And the woman who owned that school was named Medina,
12:16
Kirkwood and man. Was she a cunt?
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I don't have one nice thing to say about that, bitch.
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I'm just going to go ahead and put it out there right now.
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She was one hateful woman. She hated men, she acted like
12:31
she hated me. She was nasty to all of the
12:36
girls that took classes from her.
12:38
She told them they were fat, she was one of those dance teachers
12:42
that like had a scale over in the corner and if you're in the
12:45
dance team, you had to weigh in every single week, to make sure
12:48
that your weight was a certain weight.
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It was just terrible, but I proceeded to dance with this
12:55
woman for like the next eight years.
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Let's see. Did it at 8 8 8 8 9 10 11 12 13
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I'm not wrong about it. I didn't take off and leave
13:12
dance, land officially until I was 13 and that is when I had
13:17
auditioned to get into the Cure of Academy of ballet, which is
13:20
the elite and most prestigious Ballet Academy, besides school
13:24
of American Ballet on the East Coast.
13:28
Back in the early 90s but getting back to dance land.
13:33
When I first started taking classes at dance land, I did tap
13:37
Jazz and ballet. and, Medina thought that it would be good to
13:47
start a Juniors company as part of her dance team.
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So now we're getting into this whole Dance, Competition are the
13:57
dance competition era, for me, lasted between the ages of like
14:02
eight. To 18 years old.
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So there was a good ten year period in which what I did was I
14:12
danced, very competitively. And I started off with the
14:15
rinky-dink, dance competitions, you know, that they had in hotel
14:19
ballrooms graduated, to more Elite competitions over the
14:24
years. Highly competitive National
14:28
competitions when I was in my teens and finally International
14:32
competition, International competitions, and In Paris and
14:36
Varna Bulgaria and all over internationally when I was older
14:41
and then I stopped doing the competitions when I was 18.
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And when I was 19, I opened my first dance studio.
14:48
Now let's go ahead and go back. What was it?
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Like for me being at dance land. Well, it was like being the only
14:58
boy in a dance studio 300 girls, My young life was very, very,
15:07
very female-dominated and female influenced the biggest
15:13
influences in my life. When I was a little boy, was my
15:16
mother, my aunt, and my grandmother, my dad existed, but
15:23
didn't have anything to do with me, really?
15:26
He was just not interactive with me.
15:29
Not very affectionate with me and really for some reason
15:34
decided that he didn't want to take an interest in my
15:36
development at all and I don't know if it's because my mother
15:41
was overbearing or of my father just wasn't interested in being
15:46
a father. I'm not mad about it.
15:49
Now I've processed through a lot of that anger.
15:53
Still holding on to some resentment but slowly letting go
15:57
of that resentment, as I as I start to go into my mid-40s, not
16:04
mad about it. Maybe a little better.
16:09
But I've gotten over most of it. My father, not my father, my
16:14
father. Here's one thing about my
16:16
father, my mother. My father never said anything
16:18
negative about me, dancing. Let me, let me spin this, let me
16:22
make it positive. I want to make it positive for a
16:24
second. My dad financially supported, my
16:28
mother's efforts to have me and dance and my dad financially
16:32
supported my efforts to be a professional dancer as I got
16:37
older. So the man an worked hard, he
16:41
paid the bills and he put out a lot of money for me to dance.
16:46
Now, how I feel about it, when I look back in retrospect is I
16:52
think he thought, if I pay for all of this shit and we can get
16:56
Matilda, we can get my wife out of the house with this kid, and
16:59
I can have peace and quiet because my mother and my father
17:03
fought like cats and dogs. So anything to keep my mom
17:07
occupied, anything that was going to like, get me out of the
17:11
house and get her out of the house.
17:13
Was something that my dad was down for paying for So my mother
17:19
put me in the school dance land, and it was just I was the only
17:22
boy and the school. Matter of fact, I was one of,
17:25
like, three boys that danced in like all of Hampton Roads, which
17:30
is Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Norfolk and Hampton.
17:36
And that whole region of Southern Virginia right down on
17:40
the border of North Carolina. That's where I was born and
17:43
raised, that's where I danced. And literally, there were no
17:46
boys. Boys boys, didn't dance back in
17:51
the late 80s, early 90s, it's just you didn't find them, you
17:56
found boys that dancer, let's say men that danced or teenage
18:00
men that danced in very big cities.
18:02
Like New York, la la Miami, big cities but for little cities,
18:12
Like, medium sized cities and anybody else.
18:17
People just boys just weren't put into dance classes.
18:21
So, I would remember going to these dance competitions and
18:23
randomly seeing another boy stretching or onstage,
18:28
competing, and it was like, wow! We are fucking unicorns within
18:34
this industry. And You know.
18:40
I've always had a very complex and complicated relationship
18:44
with women. And I do believe that a lot of
18:47
my I guess you could say Hang-Ups difficulties.
18:56
Maintaining friendships or difficulty, maintaining romantic
19:01
relationships with women, I'd say has been very, very
19:06
challenging and I'm going to go ahead and Associate it with
19:10
everything that happened to me before the age of 13.
19:13
There you go. My mom was overbearing.
19:18
She was vicariously Living her life through me.
19:23
I had a relationship with my aunt that was not healthy.
19:28
My my grandmother was the Saving Grace of my family until she
19:34
passed away. When I was ten, everything
19:36
changed in my family, after my grandmother died, and I really,
19:40
really focused on dance. And then I would go to dance
19:43
school and be surrounded by all of these girls.
19:46
And I would be led by this really man-hating.
19:50
Hey, For woman named Medina. So that was like my life and
19:55
what I danced all the time I was there like Monday, Wednesday
19:58
Friday Nights from like 5 p.m. till 9 p.m. and Saturdays from
20:04
like 9:00 a.m. to like 3 p.m. it just by the age of ice.
20:10
I started when I was eight, she gave me a little tap solo.
20:15
Still trying to find the video of it.
20:17
That I want to post on YouTube. But I did a little tap solo, and
20:21
it was so cute because I had like a little Cain, and I had a
20:23
little hat, and I had a little sequined vest.
20:26
And when I was tap dancing on stage, like my hat fell down in
20:30
my eyes and I was scared to look at the audience and I was
20:33
looking at the floor and it's the most precious thing you've
20:36
ever seen in your entire life. I have to find this video but
20:40
that was when I was eight or nine then by the age of 10
20:44
Medina decided we're going to have a junior company.
20:47
So she led a whole bunch of tin to, I guess, 10 to 10 to 12 to
20:52
13 year, old kids into her dance company.
20:56
Dance lands, competitive dance company you have you used to
21:00
have to be like 14 and up to be in the competitive dance, but
21:04
she brought in kids and I was one of the kids that was brought
21:07
in like one of eight or ten kids that started doing our very
21:12
first competitive routine that we did with one another that won
21:15
us a lot of gold medals was the Slide.
21:18
We did the Electric Slide everybody, and it was totally
21:22
cute. I'll never forget it.
21:24
Hopefully, I can find a video of it.
21:27
But the election Electric Slide went for a while and I did her
21:31
recitals every single year and growing up.
21:34
I became more and more important because I was the only male to
21:38
perform male roles and so I ended up being the lead the last
21:43
year that I was there. I was the lead in her ballet at
21:47
the recital Wanderers of the world.
21:51
So I do have that all of that on video.
21:55
But I decided that I was just Going to post very, very few
21:59
videos about my early dance career because that's I post.
22:05
What I'm proud of stuff. That is not so great or stuff.
22:08
That's just boring as hell. I'm not posting on YouTube.
22:12
But what happened was? While I was at dance land.
22:20
And while I was doing these dance competitions, like dance
22:23
search, Dance, troupe. And all of these in Southern
22:26
Virginia, a man named, Frank. Hatchet was a very, very famous
22:31
choreographer. He choreographed for Janet
22:33
Jackson. He was all over the place
22:35
between New York and l.a. he taught at Broadway, Dance Center
22:38
in New York, and he came as a judge.
22:41
And I did my jazz solo. And he judged me, I want a gold
22:47
at that competition. And he approached my mother and
22:49
said, your son has a lot of talent and he's being wasted
22:53
here in Virginia. He needs to come to New York
22:57
City, he needs to come to Broadway, Dance Center, and he
23:00
needs to train. He needs to take my classes.
23:03
So my mother at the age of 1011. 1112 decided it was a good idea
23:16
for like four or five months to go to New York, crash in New
23:21
York, at our friend's home in Brooklyn and take me into the
23:25
city every single day to the Broadway Dance Center in order
23:28
to train. And that is when I started
23:31
receiving professional Level Training, because I was like 11
23:35
years old, going to the Broadway Dance Center.
23:39
Taking classes with adults, I was in adult dance classes when
23:43
I was a kid. I was like the only
23:46
eleven-year-old in the very, very, very back of the room.
23:50
During the daytime, taking these ballet classes, taking these
23:55
Jazz classes and really, really training, and you can see if you
23:59
if you watch my videos, you'll see that there is a significant
24:07
jump in technique. In quality of performance and
24:12
Power. And cleanliness of choreography.
24:16
That's that really, really happens at a very rapid Pace in
24:21
about a four to five year period of time.
24:25
I graduated so quickly and I progress so quickly through
24:30
those levels that by the age of 13, I was ready to go to the
24:35
kirov ballet Academy. You know what's funny is when I
24:42
was in New York City, taking these classes.
24:46
Frank Hatchet had said, you know, you need to put him in
24:48
acting classes. So I went to we sparin School of
24:52
TV and I started studying acting when I was a kid.
24:55
And I want you guys to know That I auditioned for.
25:02
Home Alone. Yes, I auditioned for a home
25:07
alone and I got called back once I got called back twice.
25:11
I got called back three times and we were told that the
25:15
audition was down between me and another little boy, and then my
25:20
parents decided that I could not do the movie because it was a
25:24
Christmas movie. And Jehovah's Witnesses, do not
25:27
celebrate Christmas. So my parents yanked me from the
25:32
Home Alone. Audition process because it was
25:37
a Christmas movie. And so what you got was Macaulay
25:43
Culkin. Yes, everybody, that could have
25:46
been me. I was that close.
25:48
I was just little Punky redheaded.
25:50
Smartass kid. I very very and you guys know
25:55
how expressive I can be. I very well.
25:58
Could have been In the role of home alone, I would have had a
26:05
very, very, very different life. If I would have taken that job.
26:10
Doesn't mean I would have got it probably wouldn't have, but man,
26:13
wouldn't have that been interesting?
26:15
If I would have been in home alone, I don't have any interest
26:21
at all in being a part of Hollywood or anything that has
26:23
to do with Hollywood at this stage of my life.
26:27
And I'm not really mad about not breaking in.
26:30
To the movie business because well you just look at
26:34
everybody's life. Whoever got involved as a kid
26:37
very very messy. So, we went back home my mother
26:43
and I, and I went back to dancing at dance, land, Medina
26:49
was still a bitch. And then, my mom found this
26:53
group of kids that that did acting and musical theater
26:57
called the hurrah players. There were several musical
26:59
theater groups in Virginia. Norfolk one was called the
27:04
hurrah players. It was for kids and another one
27:06
was called Commonwealth. Musical Stage Company.
27:09
I think Hurrah players are still around but what I did was I
27:13
auditioned and made it into the hurrah players and I ended up
27:18
for the next. I'd say two years two and a half
27:21
years, maybe even close to three years doing performances with
27:26
hurrah players. That was a lot of fun stage
27:30
performing musical theater, so much fun.
27:33
I was able to break out past just being a dancer and actually
27:37
moved into playing roles. Yes.
27:42
And then when it came time when I was 13, I auditioned for
27:46
Commonwealth musical Stage Company, and made it into the
27:49
music man and that had been the most professional show.
27:52
I was ever in up to the age of 13, getting into the music man,
27:57
as the lead dancer. In that particular musical, I'm
28:02
going to take a sip of my coffee over here. so, That was a lot of
28:13
shit to pack into. My young life because we really,
28:21
we really did train every single day.
28:23
Almost every other day. And we went to at least five or
28:28
six local Regional competitions in dance land and we would
28:33
always go to a National Convention in the summertime it
28:36
differ. Different competition was picked
28:38
every single year. Sometimes we went to Georgia,
28:40
sometimes we went to Daytona Beach, Florida.
28:43
It was always in the South but we'd go to Georgia of Florida
28:48
are South Carolina to do a National Convention workshop and
28:54
competition every single year that I was dancing in competing
28:59
with Medina. Those those were good times.
29:04
I'm not gonna lie. I had a really rough Early
29:07
Childhood. I really I was like, I don't
29:15
want to say a slave. I don't want to say, I felt like
29:17
a slave, but I slaved over, I slaved to to dance for these
29:24
people. And I really wanted to do a good
29:26
job and I really enjoyed being out of the house because being
29:30
out of the house and away from my family was, was, was worth
29:35
all of the pain suffering, crying bleeding, bruises,
29:44
injuries, And let me tell you, the last beef that I have with
29:47
Medina, when I was at Dance Slam, she trained us on a
29:52
concrete floor. We danced on concrete.
29:58
Of course, there was tiling over top of it, but it was just this
30:01
random strip mall that dance land was in.
30:05
Excuse me, let me belch in your ear.
30:08
It was this random strip mall that dance land was in.
30:13
And the floor was not a raised floor.
30:15
When you're a dancer, you have to dance on a proper floor.
30:19
There's a floor. That's put down, that's wood.
30:21
That's hardwood or even sometimes today, it's like not
30:25
necessarily real wood, it could be Marley, which is like a
30:29
rubber finish that they put on dance floors, but it's padded.
30:34
It's got a little given it so that when you jump and you land,
30:38
you're Landing on hard concrete, okay.
30:43
Well, I danced on concrete for like 10 years.
30:48
Because even when I danced for, even when I took classes or
30:53
performed for hurrah players, I still practiced on concrete.
30:58
So it was it was just really, really hard on my young body.
31:02
I've got injuries in my body. I've probably had since I was
31:06
like 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old.
31:10
So it was really really brutal on all of the joints to like,
31:13
run jump, tuck and roll, land tumble.
31:18
Fall to your knees. And we used to do this thing,
31:20
where we would jump in the air and we would do a Russian split,
31:23
you know, when you jump up in the air and you try to touch
31:26
your toes by spray split, spreading your legs into a
31:29
straddle and we would drop down into the splits.
31:33
We were just blam just like that.
31:35
We would jump do the splits and then blam just land like right
31:40
down on the ground. Like from midair.
31:42
We would just crash to the floor and fall into the splits on
31:46
concrete. I remember when I remember one
31:51
night that we had trained so hard for this dance competition,
31:54
we were going to do that. I was laying in my bed. and I
31:59
was laying face down in my bed and all of a sudden, I got a
32:03
cramp In the back of my leg, my calf.
32:08
And the next thing I know my whole body, just bone.
32:13
It's just like bowed up. I like, I just am.
32:15
I, I looked up into the air and I look like a banana.
32:19
I just everything. Just went up.
32:21
My feet went up, my legs went up.
32:24
My head went up my back arched up and I was little Literally
32:30
every single muzzle on my legs and my back completely seized
32:36
and I had, I screamed I was screaming and my mother came
32:42
into my room. I was all bowed up like a bow in
32:47
my bed. She actually had to grab ahold
32:51
of my legs and my back, my shoulders and like, press me
32:55
back down into the bed and hold me.
32:58
Down until the cramp finished. So oh my God I remember that.
33:04
Oh, so painful it was so painful, my body is so
33:09
traumatized, you know, my body is super traumatized, my body is
33:14
so mad at me for all of the things I've done to it.
33:19
Oh my god. I've done so much to it.
33:22
Now, for my credit, I do have to say that when I was about 21
33:28
years, Old, I started practicing yoga and pilates and practicing
33:32
yoga and pilates and doing weightlifting.
33:34
Also light weight, lifting, and other Fitness did help heal a
33:42
lot of problems. Along with going to an
33:44
acupuncturist, a chiropractor and getting massage therapy,
33:48
really, really helped also heat therapy.
33:51
Saunas, steam rooms and anything.
33:52
That's related to Spa stuff is also very good for your body.
33:56
I've been doing that for a very long Long time also.
34:00
Hurrah players was fun. I was able to perform at the
34:03
Grand Ole Opry with the hurrah players.
34:05
We traveled a lot. Hurrah players Hugh Copeland who
34:09
was artistic director of that. He really still had his hand in
34:13
a lot of pots and he had a lot of connections in New York on
34:16
Broadway. In all over the South.
34:22
And there was a lot of kids that went to hurrah players trained
34:25
with Hugh and then got jobs on Broadway.
34:28
He sent them up to New York for auditions and stuff and and he
34:33
was actually very good about helping a lot of kids get into
34:35
Broadway. so that pretty much sums up the first 13 years of my
34:50
dance career. And then what happened was?
34:58
Oh, I remember how this all ended.
35:01
I have to tell you about how my career at dance land, School of
35:05
Dance, with Medina Kirkwood ended.
35:08
So I was I told you that I got into the music man, with
35:11
Commonwealth musical Stage Company.
35:14
I was getting ready to do performances for Commonwealth
35:19
musical stage and they had dress rehearsals.
35:22
And I also had a dance competition to do like a week
35:26
before. Commonwealth stage started its
35:29
performances. I had gotten permission from
35:31
Commonwealth musical Stage Company to go do these
35:35
competitions during the daytime in Virginia Beach and then come
35:38
in the evening and then do the dress rehearsal.
35:40
So I was like competing during the day doing dress rehearsals
35:43
at night, I was competing with Medina and then doing
35:46
Commonwealth musical stage at night and Medina Decided that
35:52
she wanted to schedule rehearsals at the same time that
35:56
I had. Scheduled rehearsals with
35:57
Commonwealth musical Stage Company, we had already had a
36:00
conversation with Medina about what my schedule was and that
36:05
fucking cunt decided that she wanted to schedule competition
36:10
rehearsals at the exact same time.
36:13
So I went in a Saturday morning sat down this was about a week
36:18
before the competition and everything.
36:20
She started. She decided that she was going
36:22
to announce to everybody that the final rehearsal schedule for
36:26
the dance competition. We were going to do this
36:28
national competition was this. And if anybody was not going to
36:32
show up for any of the rehearsals, you can leave now
36:36
and you can not be in this competition.
36:40
So I was like, really, I'm 13, I'm looking around at all these
36:45
kids, all these kids are sitting there and I knew that she did
36:50
that for me. I knew that was special for me.
36:52
I knew that she wanted to do some kind of loyalty test or
36:56
something like that. And do, you know, I stood up, I
37:00
looked at her, I looked at everybody.
37:02
I looked at all the kids, the kids were like, Shocked and I
37:08
looked at Medina and I just shook my head.
37:12
Throw up my hands and walked out of the dance studio and never
37:16
walked back. Never walked back in.
37:20
I did have the opportunity to confront her at the national
37:23
competition. So so after I throw up my hands,
37:26
I walked out. I said to my mom, let's leave.
37:30
I'm out of here. We got in the car, we drove off
37:33
and I said I will go to the competition.
37:35
I will compete my solos, I will compete my Duets but I'm done
37:38
with this dance studio. Fuck, these people I never want
37:41
to see them again. I never want to see that bitch
37:43
again that hateful woman so I did end up going to the dance
37:49
competition and when I went to the dance competition, I did
37:53
confront Medina and tell her that.
37:55
I didn't appreciate the way she treated me.
37:58
Do you know that woman? Just stood there and stared at
38:00
me and looked at me told me that it was my fault.
38:05
That she was just such a great narcissist, everything was
38:08
always, everyone else's fault and and it was my fault that I
38:13
chose to walk away from her dance company.
38:15
Even though she put the pressure on me and put down an ultimatum
38:18
that she knew that I would not be able to follow through with
38:21
because I was getting paid by Commonwealth.
38:23
It was like a paid job. And I had to do that job.
38:28
And she was just angry. She was jealous.
38:31
She was mean, and I don't have anything nice to say about her.
38:36
That was the competition in which I met a boy named Rasta
38:43
Thomas. Rasta rasta pasta.
38:49
I went into the dance competition for the Jazz solo
38:54
category and I looked up and remember that song come baby
38:59
come come baby baby, come yes, Rasta was dancing, his Jazz solo
39:05
to come baby come, and he was wearing a pair of army pants.
39:09
Pair of jazz boots, and he was wearing like a white tank.
39:12
Top wife beater And I saw this boy dancing and I said, oh my
39:18
God, this kid is the best thing since sliced bread.
39:21
And after he came off stage, I went up to him to say hey man
39:25
you're a really awesome like that was really really awesome.
39:28
I loved watching you dance. Like you're a great.
39:30
Where are you from? He was like, oh I'm from
39:33
Annapolis. Maryland, I go to the school
39:35
called The Cure of Academy. It's awesome.
39:37
And he was like, oh you need to come.
39:39
You need to come audition and and then my mom met his dad,
39:42
Dan. And We started talking at the
39:46
competition hanging out because the competition was a couple of
39:49
days long and nobody had anything to do.
39:53
Nowhere to go, we hung out with them.
39:55
And then it was decided that I needed to come to the Cure of
39:58
Academy of ballet and audition to see if I could get into the
40:01
Ballet Academy. Rasta.
40:07
I loved Rasta and I basically fell in love with Rasta and
40:11
Rasta was like my first crush really, really My First Crush.
40:15
Rasta was my first crush, kind of like my first love, my first
40:21
Teenage Love, I was obsessed with Rasta, like most.
40:25
People were obsessed with Rasta, when he was young because he was
40:28
just so charismatic and he was such a phenomenal dancer.
40:32
And I want to talk more about Rasta when I come back, we're
40:35
going to talk about. How I auditioned got into the
40:38
kirov Academy of ballet. And then, for the rest of this
40:42
program, today we're going to be talking about the Cure of ballet
40:49
and what happened to me between the ages of 13 and a half
40:54
turning 14 all the way to the age of 17.
41:05
All right, so the kirov Ballet Academy.
41:09
What the hell is the kirov Ballet Academy?
41:13
Well, it just so happens that there was, okay.
41:18
This is everything about the Cure of becomes more and more
41:21
interesting, and more and more complicated as we go.
41:25
So I don't know if you've ever heard of a little group called
41:28
The Moonies and I know that's not what they're called the
41:32
Moonies, but they're called that and South Korea.
41:35
Via there is a man or there was a man.
41:37
I don't even know if this guy is still alive, but his name was
41:41
Revit, Reverend Sun, Myung Moon, and this little Korean guy
41:49
decided that he was like Jesus brother or something or like the
41:55
messiah's brother or something like that.
41:58
And he decided that he was going to start a cult and I don't even
42:04
remember what the name of his cult was, but everybody used to
42:08
call them the Moonies. Okay, this little North Korean
42:12
guy loved ballet and Classical Ballet and his daughter, loved
42:18
Classical Ballet. And what he did was, he started
42:21
an entire dance company. Now, this guy had so much money,
42:24
he was like Rich Filthy Rich and he decided that He was going to
42:29
start a dance company in North Korea and he was going to start
42:32
a ballet Academy in Washington. D.c. called the universal Ballet
42:38
Academy. This is the foundation.
42:42
The foundation is the universal Ballet Academy and a couple of
42:46
years in to having this Ballet Academy.
42:49
He approached a man named Oleg vinogradov Oleg vinogradov was
42:54
the artistic director of the kirov ballet of st.
42:58
Petersburg Russia, the vaganova school and Russian, we're
43:02
talking about where Nureyev came from.
43:05
We're talking about where Mikhail Baryshnikov came from
43:10
all of the Great, Russian ballet dancers that you can think of,
43:14
from the from the 60s, 70s, the 80s, all of these male dancers,
43:20
and female dancers that defected over from the Soviet Union into
43:25
the United States. Like Nureyev, like Baryshnikov,
43:30
they were all trained and they all came from st.
43:32
Petersburg, Russia. Trained at the vaganova school
43:35
dance with the kirov ballet defected and came to the United
43:38
States. Well, oh, like vinegar.
43:41
Out of was approached by Reverend Moon and asked if he
43:45
would head our spearhead the Cure of ballets and the vaganova
43:51
schools school in America and Bush.
43:57
The first one actually invited Oleg, vinaigrette of, to set up
44:01
the kirov Ballet Academy in Washington DC.
44:06
So, if you don't know what the Cure of is k.i., V the kirov
44:12
ballet. I definitely recommend getting
44:14
on Google Google Googling it and seeing the illustrious history
44:20
of this Ballet company, that goes back back, back, back back
44:25
for very, very, very long time. Very, very old dance company and
44:32
school in st. Petersburg Russia.
44:35
They decided that they were going to have a school in
44:37
Washington DC. Well, all of these kids from
44:41
South Korea, South America, Japan Romania, Russia, other
44:50
parts of Western Europe and America trained at the kirov
44:56
Academy. It was an audition based
44:59
Academy. So you had to audition, you had
45:02
to make it in and it was just brutal.
45:09
It was absolutely brutal. It was like let's bring Russia
45:14
to America and let's have all of these Russian ballet
45:18
instructors, teach these American kids.
45:21
These cushy American kids but we were not cushy by any means at
45:25
all. It was like it was not like a
45:27
Ballet Academy, it was like a military academy.
45:33
It was like fall in line. Snap into line.
45:38
Keep your chin up, keep your chest up and your cock Out,
45:41
Boys. It was one of those kinds of
45:44
schools, so all of the girls were wafer-thin, anorexic
45:50
bulimic starved with perfect feet.
45:55
Perfect legs. Perfect.
45:56
Next perfect arms. Because the standard for the
46:00
Russian ballet was, you had to have the body type.
46:02
Type. So, literally, you were selected
46:05
because you had the body type to be able to be trained in order
46:08
to look the way you were supposed to look when you
46:11
perform to the ballet. So everyone that made it into
46:15
the kirov was extremely Elite. I was not Elite at all.
46:22
It just so happens that they needed.
46:24
One more boy to put into the level 5 class, that was ran by
46:29
mr. Zhu LeConte, see who became my
46:31
mentor who became my Coach and basically became a father figure
46:35
for me for the next four years. Rasta said, why don't you come
46:40
to the Cure of why don't you audition?
46:42
It was July. It was the end of July.
46:47
That that dance competition happened.
46:49
I went up, I took a class at the kirov.
46:51
They evaluated me mister Jewel, Akatsuki was not very impressed
46:56
with me at all. I even think that he recommended
46:59
that, I not come to the academy, but the administration said, we
47:04
need another boy, we're accepting this boy.
47:06
We're going to give him a 50% scholarship.
47:08
He has to pay for the rest of it.
47:09
We're going to bring him in. So at the end of July, beginning
47:14
of August, I was told that I needed to report to the kirov
47:17
academy of ballet on September 1st to begin.
47:20
My first year of training. I was 14 years old, just turned
47:25
14 years old. We had to raise money to go to
47:31
get to the Cure of and I'm going to go ahead and tell you a very
47:37
intimate thing that happened to me at the age of 14.
47:42
We're going to go ahead and go there.
47:43
I know that some of the stuff I talked about is really, really
47:45
deep and sometimes it's really shocking and sometimes it's
47:48
upsetting or traumatizing to people, but it's my life.
47:52
And since it's my life, I can share what I want to share and
47:55
I'm going to go ahead and put it out there.
47:58
There was a man named Herbert, G Cobb, and I'm calling him out
48:02
because he's dead and he's been dead for a long time.
48:06
Who was a total pedophile that lived in Franklin Virginia.
48:12
And it just so happened that this guy, mr.
48:15
Cobb was a patron of the Arts so he was always at the theater
48:20
watching, kids dance and watching kids perform in theater
48:26
and I actually came across Crossed him through the hurrah
48:29
players and through Commonwealth musical Stage Company.
48:32
Now, this guy, mr. Cobb took an interest in me.
48:36
Like, you know, a pedophile interest in me as a 13 year-old
48:43
12, 13 year-old boy and it was this man that I actually hustled
48:48
to get thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars out of
48:51
in order to pay for me to go to. The Cure of they had given me a
48:54
50% scholarship but I had to pay for room and board.
48:58
I had to pay for food. I had to pay to go back and
49:01
forth between Virginia to DC when I had to get there.
49:06
And so it cost a lot of money to do this.
49:09
It was an elite Ballet Academy, it cost a lot of money.
49:13
And one of the boys that was in the hurrah players and I'm not
49:18
going to say his name. Had told me that mr.
49:21
Cobb was a pervert and also told me that if I was willing to do
49:26
sex acts for mr. Cobb that he would give me
49:30
money. So this was something that was
49:33
known among the boys at the hurrah players or at least a few
49:38
of the boys. I guess you could say, the cute
49:40
white boys. Specifically knew that this guy
49:44
would give them money if they did sexual acts for him.
49:50
So, it actually turns out that I mr.
49:54
Cobb had decided that he was going to invite me out because I
49:59
told my mom, I said, I think mr. Cobb will be able to give us
50:02
money if we ask him in order for me to go to the Cure of.
50:06
So my mom set up a meeting for me to go out and see him.
50:11
Well, I think it's very interesting, that mr.
50:14
Cobb said to my mom, I'm willing to talk to your son but you need
50:17
to sit in the car. So my mom like a dumbass
50:23
basically just drove me to this pedophiles house.
50:26
Let me go in and hang out with this pedophile in order to ask
50:30
him for money. Well, as it comes down to it, I
50:35
get into his apartment. I sit down, we start talking
50:39
about my career, I start telling them about my opportunity to go
50:43
to the kirov and basically, the motherfucker looked at me in the
50:47
eye and was like, okay well what are you going to do for me?
50:51
And it was the first time I ever performed a sexual act or
50:55
performed a trick for money. I knew I was going to get the
51:00
money. I wanted to get the hell out of
51:02
Hampton Roads. I wanted to get the hell away
51:05
from my parents. All I wanted to do was dance
51:07
Ants. That's all I wanted to do.
51:09
I wanted to go to d.c., I wanted to be with Rasta.
51:14
I wanted to be with Rasta. I wanted to go to the Cure of.
51:16
I wanted to dance. I wanted to get out of Virginia,
51:19
because I hated Virginia and better than that.
51:22
I wanted to get away from my family, so I stood up, I undid
51:27
my belt, I unzipped my pants and the guy basically gave me a blow
51:32
job, right there, at the age of 14 with my mom, sitting out in
51:40
the car thinking that we're just in there talking about dance.
51:44
So yeah, I just want to go ahead and put that out there that that
51:47
guy probably did that to a lot of boys over the process of his
51:53
entire life. He had money.
51:57
He had money to spend and that was his thing, young boys.
52:03
And I know that that was a traumatizing event for me, it
52:08
was absolutely disgusting. The guy was disgusting, he was
52:13
like, in his late 70s, Maybe even closer to 80.
52:19
He was fumbly his hands were shaky.
52:22
It was it was, he had horrible skin.
52:25
He was just really, really gross.
52:28
He was like a gremlin to me and he was always really, really
52:33
prior to that event actually happening.
52:35
He would do all of these things where he would grab my shoulder,
52:39
or he would grab my leg, or he would grab my knee.
52:42
Are he would make these kinds of faces towards me or Make these
52:46
kind of remarks. These comments that were
52:48
completely inappropriate for a grown man to be making to a
52:52
teenage boy in a sexual way that I just kind of smiled and was
52:56
like and I just kind of like brushed it off for a very long
53:00
time until I needed that money. So I think it's interesting that
53:07
Kids. No kids aren't stupid by the age
53:11
of like 12, 13, 14, you know what's going on in this world?
53:15
And I have never forgotten that. That's why my daughter is at the
53:19
age right now where she's moving into the same age.
53:22
I was when that kind of thing happened to me and I'm very,
53:26
very cognizant over the fact that kids need to be protected
53:31
Kids need to be protected and there's a resentment that I have
53:35
towards my parents a little bit of a resentment because I don't
53:39
know how they didn't know when I look back on it.
53:44
I don't know how they turned away or did not realize that
53:52
these things were going on. It's impossible for me to think
53:56
that my mom didn't understand what was going on when this
54:01
whole shindig was going down. But you know what I did?
54:06
I sucked it. Up buttercup.
54:08
I did what I had to do. I sold my body, I put myself in
54:13
a situation where I knew, I had an advantage, I knew that if if
54:18
this guy did not give me exactly what I wanted I was going to
54:21
completely out him. I was going to completely smear
54:24
him and I was going to tell everybody in the world that he
54:27
tried to molest me or that he molested me.
54:29
Like, I was totally down to completely destroying this
54:32
person's life and threatened him if he did not give me.
54:35
Money that I wanted but it turns out that he decided to give me
54:41
something like I don't know, five six thousand dollars in
54:44
order to go to the Cure of. So I got exactly what I wanted
54:48
needless to say, I made it to the Cure of Academy of ballet.
54:54
Now, what was it like, being at the kirov Academy of ballet?
54:58
It was very cold, it was a very cold environment, all of the
55:04
Russian teachers were very, very Russian, you know.
55:08
And I want to say that the Russian people can be warm
55:10
hearted but there are very frigid.
55:13
They're very cold and they're very hard.
55:16
There are hard people. They have hard lives and it's
55:21
reflected in their eyes and in the wrinkles in their face when
55:24
they smile or when they're polite to someone at least these
55:29
guys that came to America. Mr. Vinegar.
55:32
Add of decided that he was going to ask five teachers five-star
55:36
teachers to come over to America.
55:39
One of them being Alice's OVA who is named ballerina of the
55:42
century. She was also British Anna,
55:44
coughs partner when he was in Russia before he came to
55:48
America. And so, Alice is OVA, had an
55:51
illustrious career, and then she decided to come over to America
55:59
and teach at the kirov ballet. My teacher was mr.
56:03
Joe Lockett. See, and let me tell you about
56:06
this guy. This guy.
56:11
Was so angry. He was so angry.
56:17
Oh my God. Was he an angry man?
56:20
When I first started taking his classes, The Pianist Yelena
56:28
would come in and sit down because we had, you know, grand
56:31
pianos. And every single Studio, these
56:33
massively, huge Studios that were as big as a barn, you know,
56:36
just each individual Studio was huge, we're talking I can't even
56:44
imagine, I don't even I can't even say the square footage of
56:47
every single Studio was probably like 700 or 800 square feet.
56:55
It was huge. It was like every single dance
56:57
studio was basically the size of two studio apartments.
57:02
Beautiful and we had a grand piano in every single studio and
57:07
there was live music played for all of our dance classes every
57:10
single day. Mr. Jewel Akatsuki would show
57:14
up, dragging his ass in at 9:30, in the morning, to start class,
57:21
he would sit down, he would plop down on his chair, he put his
57:27
elbows on his knees, he put his hands over his face and he would
57:32
sit there for a couple of minutes.
57:35
He looked like he was hungover, he might have not been hungover,
57:38
but he, he just it looked like he hated being there.
57:42
He hated the job and he hated having to teach us boys because
57:48
we were the level five boys. Level 2 was a higher level,
57:51
boys. Level 5 was the lower level boys
57:54
and we sucked. Absolutely.
57:56
No question about you. Talking about 13, 14?
57:58
15. Even sixteen-year-old boys in
58:01
the kind of like the intermediate level classes at
58:04
the kirov and we sucked bad feet.
58:08
Bad legs, bent legs, not flexible.
58:12
Was really, really flexible, but the other boy is not flexible.
58:16
And man, did he scream at us all?
58:19
Was he, so mean he was so mean he called us motherfuckers.
58:25
Go. Fuck your mother.
58:27
You look like shit. Everything you do is shit.
58:31
Why do your arms look like shit? So I heard shit and motherfucker
58:35
thrown at us like almost every single day I would get let me
58:39
tell you about my schedule. I had a little apartment, my mom
58:44
and I had a little apartment in this place called Park Place,
58:47
which was about a mile away from the kirov, I could walk from
58:50
Park Place To The Cure of but because it was in Not the best
58:56
side of town in Washington, d.c., it was beside Catholic
58:59
University. They would have a shuttle that
59:01
would pick everybody up at 7:00 in the morning or 7:30, in the
59:05
morning, drive them over from Park Place because that's also
59:08
where the pre professionals lived, the older teenage kids
59:12
like 18, 19 years old getting ready to graduate.
59:16
They would drive us to the kirov.
59:17
I would have coffee. I would have a bagel with peanut
59:20
butter and jelly on it. I would go upstairs about 8:30
59:23
in the morning. I would start stretching
59:25
Teaching, the class started at 9:30.
59:28
So I would go and I would stretch for like an hour before
59:31
class began and you needed to stretch, you needed to stretch.
59:35
Before you took these classes. When we went into class Mister
59:38
Jewel Akatsuki would come in, we would bow because it's the
59:42
respectful way to greet your teacher when they walk in the
59:45
room and we would proceed to have like a 90 minute long.
59:51
Ballet class, with no brakes, with mr.
59:56
Zhu LeConte. See, literally beating the hell
59:59
out of us. On the bar, I think most of the
1:00:04
out of a 90-minute class, the first hour of that class was all
1:00:09
bar work. Then we would come to the center
1:00:12
of class, we would start doing Adagio, slow movements tan, dues
1:00:17
working the feet, practicing our pirouettes, and Then we got a
1:00:21
coffee break for 15 minutes. We went and had coffee at about
1:00:26
11:00. We came back and we practice for
1:00:29
another hour. So I did two and a half hour
1:00:33
long classes, Monday through Friday morning.
1:00:37
And after lunchtime, if we were rehearsing for The Nutcracker we
1:00:41
would have to come back in the afternoon around 1:00 in the
1:00:44
afternoon, and start rehearsing all of the pieces for The
1:00:47
Nutcracker, because every single year stars of The Cure, Ballet
1:00:52
in st. Petersburg, Russia would come to
1:00:54
America and the kids at the kirov Academy of ballet that
1:00:58
were worthy of being in the Nutcracker which is pretty much
1:01:03
everybody because everybody was really fucking good.
1:01:06
Would be in the Nutcracker and we would tour the country and I
1:01:10
did that for three years with the kirov ballet, I toured the
1:01:15
country with them for three years.
1:01:18
Was it for C, 14? 14, 14 15, 16 17 know, I was
1:01:26
gone by 17 by the age of 17. I was gone because I took a job
1:01:30
in Germany and I had become a soloist data at the commish
1:01:34
Opera in Berlin, Germany. So that's a different story that
1:01:37
was after my International competitions but for three years
1:01:41
I was at the Cure off for four years but three of those years I
1:01:45
traveled with them and perform the Nutcracker.
1:01:48
I just happened to be good enough.
1:01:51
The second year that I was there that I became the Nutcracker
1:01:56
doll First cast, because they had a first cast in the second
1:01:59
cast for all of the routines, all of the numbers, all of the
1:02:03
characters. But I performed all of the
1:02:05
evening performances as The Nutcracker doll, with my friend,
1:02:08
Casey heard, Who later became a principal dancer with Pacific
1:02:16
Northwest ballet. He was the mouse King.
1:02:20
I was the Nutcracker and we would do that in our
1:02:23
performances. Oh man, was it a grand thing
1:02:28
performing, the original Nutcracker with original
1:02:31
choreography to the original music, of course, Tchaikovsky's
1:02:35
Nutcracker, but to a live Orchestra and Performing that
1:02:39
every winter between November and December or sometimes, early
1:02:44
January and traveling to Texas to California to Florida.
1:02:48
Florida middle of the country. All over the place.
1:02:53
We toured all over the place. And did these performances for
1:02:57
about two and a half months in the winter time?
1:03:01
Starting in November through December and also through the
1:03:04
beginning of January for The Nutcracker.
1:03:07
And then after we finished our Nutcracker tour, we went on
1:03:11
break and we would come back in February and continue on our
1:03:14
training. February March April, May we
1:03:18
will. Train to get better at what we
1:03:21
did and at the end of the year, we would do a class
1:03:24
demonstration for mr. Vinegar olive who would show up
1:03:26
every single year and he would sit through all six levels of
1:03:30
the different classes for the boys and girls and he would
1:03:32
Monitor and make sure that the training that the boys and girls
1:03:35
were receiving was a quality training that they would get as
1:03:38
if they were in Russia at the vaganova school.
1:03:41
And if you go to my YouTube channel, you will see that I
1:03:46
actually was lucky enough to Obtain the video of my first
1:03:51
year, at the kirov Academy of ballet doing a class
1:03:56
demonstration for mr. Oleg vinogradov And you will see
1:04:03
that the five boys that were there.
1:04:06
You'll see how regimented those ballet.
1:04:08
Classes were all the ballet classes were just so rough and
1:04:13
even though I'm going to tell you a story about mr.
1:04:15
Drew LeConte. See, I want to tell you how I
1:04:16
got. I guess you could say my street
1:04:19
cred when I was at the Cure of the first year, I was there.
1:04:23
You know, I didn't have a ballet background I was primarily
1:04:26
musical theater Jazz tap lyrical, dance ballet, just
1:04:32
wasn't my thing but I ended up in this prestigious Ballet
1:04:36
Academy, there was a day I'd say maybe a month and a half two
1:04:41
months into my first year. That the level five boys in the
1:04:47
level two boys mixed with one another and did a class with one
1:04:50
another because the level 2 teacher was sick or something.
1:04:54
And so the level two boys came into the level five class.
1:04:58
Well, we were all standing in the line, we're talking about
1:05:00
like 20 25 boys. Okay?
1:05:03
Ranging between the ages of 14 and 19, even 20.
1:05:08
We are all standing in a line. I was in the front of the line
1:05:11
in the front of the classroom, and everybody went into fifth
1:05:14
position, prepared for the exercise and turn their head to
1:05:17
the right, and looked off to the diagonal and a Palma.
1:05:20
That's what we call it. You stand, and you turn your
1:05:23
head because there's all of these gestures.
1:05:25
Obviously, these these gestures and head positions that are
1:05:29
performed in ballet. Well, everybody went into a palm
1:05:32
on everybody looked over to the right over there, right shoulder
1:05:35
and off to the diagonal. And I did not.
1:05:40
I was just standing there. I was tired.
1:05:42
I was exhausted. This was more dance that I had
1:05:45
ever done in my entire life. I was looking at myself in the
1:05:48
mirror and all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye.
1:05:52
I see mr. Drew LeConte.
1:05:53
See from the other side of the room, start stampeding in my
1:05:57
direction, blam-blam-blam-blam I could His footsteps and I could
1:06:03
see him coming in my direction and all of the boys just froze,
1:06:06
they just froze when mr. Zhu lacaze.
1:06:10
Got to me, he took his right hand and he swung and he hit me
1:06:15
across my left cheek my the left side of my face and head to turn
1:06:21
my head into a Palma. He literally almost punched me
1:06:27
out. I had a handprint across my
1:06:30
face. Ace.
1:06:31
And when he slapped my face to turn my head, I literally felt
1:06:35
like my neck. Crack it was like crack crack
1:06:37
crack. Almost like, he almost broke my
1:06:39
neck and he, and he hit me hard. He was angry.
1:06:45
And he took his anger out on me and he slapped slap hit me.
1:06:50
So that I would turn my face and he screamed in my face, it Palm
1:06:54
up motherfucker and I turn my head.
1:06:59
And I just turned my head. And I did a Palma.
1:07:02
I looked over my shoulder. I looked up.
1:07:04
I looked out. I did not react.
1:07:07
I did not get tears in my eyes. I did not do anything except
1:07:11
look out and keep my chin up. And The Pianist was mad.
1:07:19
All The Pianist actually yelled out Vladimir after he did it.
1:07:25
And then he walked away from me sat down in his chair the music
1:07:29
started and I proceeded to do the routine after that dance
1:07:34
class was over. I walked out of the dance class
1:07:36
and there was one boy after another that ran up to me and
1:07:39
said, oh my fucking god, Philip he hit you, he hit you, he
1:07:44
assaulted you, you could sue him, you could close this entire
1:07:47
school down. After him hitting you like that.
1:07:52
After him, punching you in the face.
1:07:55
And I said, it's not a thing. Whatever and I got such street
1:08:01
cred in front of all of the boys that day when I took that level
1:08:06
of abuse. When I suffered when I when I
1:08:08
took that punch and I didn't move I showed everybody that I
1:08:13
was a hardcore mother fucker, I was there for it.
1:08:18
I was not leaving any other boy in that room would have
1:08:22
collapsed. Any other boy in that room would
1:08:26
have started crying any other boy in that room might even go
1:08:31
home and call their parents and the parents could come and shut
1:08:33
down that fucking place. But did I absolutely not.
1:08:37
And you know why? Because being at the kirov.
1:08:42
Being at the kirov and dancing with the Cure of as hard as it
1:08:47
was as militaristic as they were, as abusive as they were to
1:08:51
us, was still better than me being in Virginia, and still
1:08:56
better than me being around my parents.
1:09:00
And that's how I live for the four years that I was there.
1:09:04
It was hard, the after the first year of training with the Cure
1:09:10
of and going on tour with them and the Nutcracker and having a
1:09:13
small role Well actually I didn't have a small role.
1:09:18
Did II was second cast Russian dance.
1:09:21
I was actually so good at musical theater and character
1:09:24
dancing is what they called it and jazz dancing that they put
1:09:27
me in the role of the Russian dance dumped it in Tintin,
1:09:30
Tintin, Tintin, Tintin, Tintin, Tintin, dun dun dun dun dun dun
1:09:34
dun. I actually performed that my
1:09:36
first year with the Cure of and I did that in the second cast
1:09:39
matinee performances, the year. After that, I became the
1:09:42
Nutcracker doll and did Russian dance First cast.
1:09:45
So I can say that I did very well for myself at that school.
1:09:53
And what was the point of what I was going to say about all of
1:09:55
that? It was hard.
1:09:58
It was a very difficult life. Being there.
1:10:02
And what was interesting is that we had about 80 kids, 75 to 80
1:10:06
kids, that would get accepted into the school every year.
1:10:09
In six, different levels of classes, of kids of different
1:10:13
ages and Sexes and by the end of Nutcracker tour and the
1:10:18
beginning of the spring, it would drop by like 20 students.
1:10:23
It would always drive would always get down to like the 60s
1:10:27
because kids just fell out. They couldn't take it, they
1:10:30
couldn't take the Heat. Couldn't take the stress, they
1:10:32
couldn't take the pressure, it was just too much for most
1:10:36
normal human beings that don't like pain.
1:10:40
Don't want to be tortured, don't want to be ballet, slaves and
1:10:43
don't want to be abused. But for those of us that stuck
1:10:47
around, we came the we became the best dancers.
1:10:53
And the best competitive dancers in the world.
1:10:59
The first year of the Cure of, when that was over me and Rasta
1:11:03
went on national tour to dance. Masters of America, rainy Gold's
1:11:08
American Dance Awards and took all the top Awards.
1:11:11
StarQuest took all the top Awards, me and Rasta when we
1:11:15
were 15 years old where the best male teenage dancers in America.
1:11:24
I would say roster was the best teen dancer in America.
1:11:28
And I would say that I was number two.
1:11:31
There are a lot of good male dancers.
1:11:34
At dance competitions. But the advantage that me and
1:11:38
Rasta had was that we had professional training by
1:11:41
internationally renowned ballet instructors, our pirouettes were
1:11:45
clean, our toes were pointed. Our arms were strong and sharp
1:11:49
we danced with our chin, up our chest out and our cock forward.
1:11:54
We were strong, male dancers, and there were a lot of parents
1:11:58
and dance studio owners that saw me in Rasta, show up to compete
1:12:01
at competitions and threaten the Is to pull their Studio that day
1:12:07
because they said it was unfair that Rasta and I could come and
1:12:10
compete in these dance competitions.
1:12:13
Now, the thing is that we never got paid by the kirov ballet to
1:12:16
tour with them. We were only students so because
1:12:19
we didn't accept money to perform with the Cure of the
1:12:23
dance competitions. Would let us compete?
1:12:25
Because we were not professionals but we had
1:12:28
professional training. We were the best everybody
1:12:31
wanted to be us. It was me and Rasta, Michelle
1:12:35
Wiles, and a very small group of kids around the country that
1:12:39
were just absolutely Elite. That always went to the top of
1:12:43
the competitions and always competed for the best and I did
1:12:50
that with Rasta. And if you want to go to my
1:12:53
YouTube page, you know, Phillip Ryan deal you want to go.
1:12:58
Look at my dance videos. You'll see me in Roston, when we
1:13:00
were teenagers at the kirov. You'll also see me in Rasta that
1:13:05
summer that we performed with Fran Peters and her dance
1:13:08
troupe. It was three girls and me, and
1:13:10
Rasta and the five of us really just tore up.
1:13:14
All of the dance competition circuits.
1:13:15
Taking all of the highest places.
1:13:17
Matter of fact. Which is a dance that I posted
1:13:21
and also Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
1:13:23
Basically took the number one and the number two spot of
1:13:26
highest overall. In the entire competition we did
1:13:30
that almost everywhere. We went that summer that summer
1:13:33
is when I met Mia Michaels. That's when I met Mia Michaels
1:13:38
and me and Michael's actually lost her shit over me.
1:13:43
And told me that I was the best male dancer in the United
1:13:47
States. Mia Michaels told me that and I
1:13:50
you know what it's so funny that if what is that not America's
1:13:54
Got Talent the other one it was the dance not Dancing with the
1:13:58
Stars the other one. I don't even know if it's still
1:14:01
around but that television show that was around for a while for
1:14:05
young dancers. Has Teenage dancers and dancers
1:14:08
in their 20s. So You Think You Can Dance,
1:14:13
that's what it was called. So You Think You Can Dance if So
1:14:15
You Think You Can Dance was around in 1995, 1995 1996, I
1:14:24
would have been on that show and I would have won that.
1:14:28
So that's the kind of level that we were performing in dancing at
1:14:32
back. Then it was it was very
1:14:35
different. It was a very different thing to
1:14:38
see kids dancing in the 80s and the early 90s and people like me
1:14:43
and Rasta. And other kids that danced at
1:14:46
that level. That high level, we really
1:14:49
brought up the level of competition, because the next
1:14:52
two or three generations of kids after us that looked up to us.
1:14:57
We were like 15 years old, 14, 15, 16 years old, the younger
1:15:01
kids that were like 10 11, 12 years old?
1:15:04
They look to us and we were their Idols.
1:15:07
They wanted to beat us and so the entire Dance Competition
1:15:11
circuit elevated and became a higher standard of Excellence
1:15:15
because of people like me and Rasta So that was what happened
1:15:21
at the end of my first year at the kirov.
1:15:25
And then I went back to the care of the following year, most all
1:15:30
of the older kids had graduated that year.
1:15:34
The first year that I was there. There was a lot of
1:15:36
professionals, a lot of kids between the ages of 17, 18, 19
1:15:39
and 20 that graduated in the left and did not come back the
1:15:43
following year. I did go back the following year
1:15:45
and there was a whole new fresh blood of kids coming in young
1:15:49
kids younger and by the time they came in I had such street
1:15:55
cred that I was like the one of the cool kids that you wanted to
1:16:01
be with at the kirov. The following summer after my
1:16:05
second year of the Cure of, I went to school of American
1:16:08
Ballet, my parents literally drove me to New York City, they
1:16:12
found me an apartment to rent from a professional dancer, that
1:16:15
was in New York City Ballet. They put me in his apartment and
1:16:20
said, all right, don't get into trouble, went back home to
1:16:23
Virginia and I basically lived for like a month month and a
1:16:26
half in New York City, by my self.
1:16:32
Getting up every morning at At the age of 16.
1:16:34
Making myself coffee, going down to Tower Records, going down to
1:16:40
Lincoln Center training at school of American Ballet
1:16:45
leaving and then just walking around Manhattan, at the age of
1:16:50
16, I was just doing my own thing, living my best life,
1:16:54
going down to the east side. Going down to the Village
1:16:58
meeting. All kinds of people, different
1:17:03
kinds of People seeing the lgbtq community at the age of 16.
1:17:09
I was a loner. I was by myself and I pretty
1:17:12
much wandered around Washington, d.c. alone as a kid.
1:17:17
I wandered around New York City alone as a kid.
1:17:20
My parents just kind of let me do my own thing.
1:17:26
And we are going to talk about my alcoholism, we are going to
1:17:30
talk about alcohol and the life that I had as an alcoholic on
1:17:36
another podcast. But needless to say, those years
1:17:41
of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen Seventeen when I was out doing
1:17:44
my own thing by myself, I drank a lot.
1:17:49
So I'm going to do a special podcast.
1:17:51
Just about my alcoholism on another day but after the After
1:17:57
my third year was coming to a close.
1:18:02
That is when I went to the international dance competition
1:18:05
in Paris, I went twice the first time.
1:18:08
I didn't place the second time I went, I won the silver medal
1:18:11
first and only American to, well, I don't know if I'm the
1:18:15
only one now, but at the time first and only American to ever
1:18:18
make a medal at the international competition in
1:18:21
Paris. And after that competition, I
1:18:26
went to the kirov. And then after that, I received
1:18:29
my first contract to go to Berlin, Germany, to be a
1:18:32
soloist. And that is how I ended up in
1:18:35
Berlin, Germany at the age of 17 turning 18.
1:18:41
And I think that's where we're going to end it today because I
1:18:44
just wanted to share the the beginning of my dance career.
1:18:47
Oh, let's go ahead and finish it up.
1:18:49
Let's get to the age of 20. So I was in Berlin, Germany, and
1:18:54
I absolutely hated it. I just could not stand being in
1:18:57
Germany. The food was horrible.
1:18:59
I was losing weight. I was upset.
1:19:01
I was miserable. I did not enjoy being in a
1:19:05
company. I just felt like I shouldn't be
1:19:07
there. I did not like, being off.
1:19:10
A coast in the middle of Europe. And I basically broke my
1:19:15
contract after about a year. I said, I can't stay here.
1:19:18
Any longer I signed like, a three-year contract to be in
1:19:20
Germany after almost a year. I said, I can't do this anymore.
1:19:24
I'm so sorry I have to leave. They threatened me.
1:19:29
My parents bought me a plane ticket.
1:19:30
I got on the plane and I flew back to America and that was the
1:19:34
end of my stint at the coma Shopper in Berlin.
1:19:38
Wonderful people. Great.
1:19:40
Beautiful theater did not enjoy Germany at all.
1:19:45
Never learned anything about the language didn't like the food,
1:19:49
but the people were lovely. And that's what I did until I
1:19:55
crashed out. Like, literally, when I got back
1:19:57
from Berlin, Germany, I literally crashed out for like,
1:20:01
a year. I could not get out of bed.
1:20:03
It was like all of the trauma to my body and all of the emotional
1:20:08
stress starting at the age of eight, 82, the age of 18 when I
1:20:12
became a competitive dancer, with dance land.
1:20:14
When I went to New York City when I performed with hurrah
1:20:17
players. Commonwealth musical stage
1:20:19
meeting Ross, to going to the kirov, going to International
1:20:23
dance. Competitions going to National
1:20:26
dance competitions, going to school of American Ballet.
1:20:29
Oh, I went to the American Ballet Theater summer program
1:20:32
after my third year at the kirov.
1:20:34
I did that all summer and then I took a job in Germany.
1:20:38
I went to Germany, I couldn't do it.
1:20:40
It, I was just emotionally unstable.
1:20:42
My body was breaking down. I came home and I literally
1:20:46
crashed for a year. Maybe six to nine months, but I
1:20:51
just took a break for the first time in 10 years of dancing,
1:20:57
almost every single day. Almost every single day was
1:21:01
Sundays off. And that was the first decade of
1:21:08
my dance career, moving into the age of 19.
1:21:14
Is when I met a woman named Beverly Cordova Duane, who was
1:21:17
the artistic director of second one dance company in Virginia
1:21:21
Beach, lovely woman. I love her, and I think I've
1:21:26
talked enough about my dance career today, I'm going to come
1:21:28
back and then when I come back, we're going to talk about
1:21:31
turning 19 meeting Beverly Dwayne, and And opening my dance
1:21:39
studio and we'll save that for part, two of how my dance career
1:21:44
went down. When we come back, we'll talk
1:21:47
about next in another podcast. When I come back, we'll talk
1:21:51
about second win. We'll talk about my career and
1:21:54
my dance company that I ran down in Virginia.
1:21:58
How I got out of teaching kids? What I got into next and then
1:22:05
we'll talk about how I got into pole.
1:22:07
Dancing and wrap up part, two of my dance career at the end of my
1:22:13
pole, dancing career until today.
1:22:17
All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed my stories.
1:22:20
I hope you enjoyed learning something about me.
1:22:23
I hope you enjoyed it. Go to my YouTube channel,
1:22:26
support subscribe, watch my dance videos, and laugh and cry,
1:22:31
along with me. Have a great rest of the day.