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" I like to be around dancers who are totally committed to the art form, totally committed to the men and women around them. "

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" I feel it's my duty, my job, now to allow people to hear the dance to different genres of music, to ensure audiences have the chance to listen to tap dancing up against all these other styles. "

" They're taking away the arts programmes in the schools, and that's a terrible thing. "

" Great athletes last because they let the mental do all the work. What we do as hoofers is not so much a physical strain as everybody thinks. It's more of a mental stretch. "

" I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all. "

" It wasn't until I did a musical revue in Paris in the 1980s called 'Black and Blue,' and met the great men and women responsible for the progress of tap dance, that my relationship with the dance really began. "

" My style is raw; my style is '95. My style is what I live. My style is my story. "

" I was first introduced to dancing through the TV: I remember watching ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing when I was very little. But I felt no connection with it whatsoever: it was just like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. "

" I don't think I'm a genius. Not yet. "

" I'm inspired by breath, by the human body - by so many things. "

" I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music. "

" I'm a basketball freak. "

" My mom always had me and my brother watching old Fred Astaire movies. "

" Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing. "

" I was a drummer in a group called Three Plus. We were performing at a club in New York, and my mother signed me up for tap classes. I fell in love from the door... so you can blame it on my mother. "

" I don't really care what the visual is looking like. I've gotten away from - not shenanigans, but spectacle. "

" I did a production called 'Classical Savion,' where I did some Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Bach, Vivaldi, and all these great pieces. "

" I started as a drummer. The feet are an extension of that. "

" I'm more a percussion instrument than a dancer. "

" They all come from the street - tap, jazz and flamenco. And the streets are always changing. If it comes from the streets, change is the only thing that's consistent. "

" Tap dancing is like... it's equivalent to music, not only for the African American community, but also for the world. Tap dancing is like language; it's like air: it's like everything else that we need in order to survive. I'm blessed and honored to be knowledgeable of the art form and to be a part of the art form. "

" I want tap to be something danced in arenas. Sort of like a rock group. Other art forms happen every night. Take theater, opera; there's always opera happening every night. "

" I love riding my ATV 450. "

" What I'm trying to do is bring young people into doing tap so that the art form will keep going. "

" I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don't get into a position where they're saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died. "

" I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap. "

" I am realizing and accepting my role as a tap dancer in this world is not only to tap dance for the sake of performance, but through tap dance be able to share and spread a message and congregate with people I would not necessarily be with had it not been for dance. "

" There are people who take tap class, do a tap dance. And then there are people who know the dance, who know why they take tap classes. Who know why they do 20 shuffles, or 50 shuffles, before they go on. "

" My personal style at this point in my life is more audio; it's more driven on less visual and more musicality. But because of my upbringing, my fabulous mentors and teachers that I've had throughout my dance journey or career, I also possess a style that is of the past. It was just a matter of me reaching back. "

" When Puffy asked me to do the video, I said yes. Cuz it's all about the Benjamins! "

" Tap is still the central driving force of my life. I think and talk in dance. "