I dress according to how I feel.

And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

We don't get to pick the genes we want. There's room in this world for beauty to be diverse.

There is no shame in black beauty.

European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world - the idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception.

I remember in my very first fitting, costume designer Patricia Norris gave me a garment with these intricate stitches - stitches over stitches, because it had been repaired so many times. Once I put it on, she told me that it belonged to an actual slave woman. My heart just stopped. Each one of the stitches had a story, you know. Just recognizing this period I was going to be dancing with was a "come to Jesus" moment.

I've always had an involved imagination.