I think anything that affects me in my personal life is going to help me be a better artist on stage.

My first ballet class was on a basketball court. I'm in my gym clothes and my socks trying to do this thing called ballet.

The fact that I was African American was never addressed, and that allowed me to just be a student, like anyone else. I was not aware of how rare it was to be an African American, how rare it was to have four years of training under my belt, and how, even though I could imitate people and fake it, unprepared I was to become a professional.

That it's possible to do positive things and I think that's how we're going to set an example to be respected as women in the world.

My career came together very quickly. I only trained for four years before I became a professional, so I didn't have a lot of time to sit back and be inspired before I took my first ballet class.

I do think that it's a responsibility when there are so few of us as African Americans to kind of get to that place of success in a positive light. We should take a stance and stand for something and use that platform for positivity.

You can dream big and it doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from.