Tasleem-
Before I got here, I had no idea what to expect as far as
having an interview with you. You seem to reveal very different
sides of yourself in each of your classes.
Frankie- Yes, absolutely (smiles).
For example, a few of
us were saying that you must have been a comedian in your
past life, or that you should be. You’re always joking
around in your partner classes and the jokes seem to come
so naturally. Have you always been like that- making people
laugh, an entertainer?
(laughs) Yeah, I think I’ve
always been kind of a clown. And I know that when I was young,
my friends used to say that I should have been a comedian.
The funny thing is that I studied martial arts, and I was
very dedicated, focused and very fanatical about that. That’s
extremely serious and when I walked around, I guess I looked
very serious. It’s probably a genetic thing too, because
my mother is like that. My mother, whether she’s happy
or not, looks very intense. And I think that people from a
distance think I’m very serious. But I’ve always
been a clown. My father’s a clown. We all love to laugh.
We love to have a good time. We love stand up comedy.
As far as the classes, I think
that the joking keeps ME entertained, and it keeps the students
relaxed at the same time. I feel like dance, and anything
that deals with the body, is very sensitive to people, and
I think that they learn better if they ARE allowed to make
fun of themselves and make fun of me and laugh and smile.
But this happens without losing any of the information, or
the seriousness of the information, because it’s very
deep and very layered, the stuff that we do. I think people
GET that. The jokes just make it a lot of fun.
Yeah, although a few
times I got embarrassed because I caught myself relating to
your 80’s jokes, and I felt like I was the only one!
(laughs).
(LAUGHS) I don’t feel old,
but the more I talk about these things and the more I realize
that fewer people know what I’m talking about, it starts
feeling lonely (smiles).
But then, on the flip
side, your body movement classes reveal a different side of
you. They have a completely different feel to them. You aren’t
speaking to the class verbally, as much, and there definitely
aren’t many jokes. Instead, there is this real meditative
quality to the class. It’s very effective. Do you do
that intentionally?
Absolutely. That class in particular
is definitely a departure from the regular class setting.
And you’re right. We ARE trying to create a meditative
environment. The concentration and the focus on the music,
the things that we are doing musically, is the ultimate goal
in that class. The flexibility and the ability to develop
fine, fine motor skills is the first part of it.
Part of the philosophy is that
the EYES are very powerful and that the eyes can teach you
a lot more than you think. The process of trying to copy,
the process of trying to mimic, may not yield immediate results.
But over a period of time, not only will you figure it out,
but all of a sudden it will make sense to your body, and you’ll
say, “Okay, I can see it now”. That’s what
the body movement class is about. I like to force the students
to figure it out and to watch and go through the process of
fighting with their body a little bit until it makes sense
to them. Because they’ll learn and it will be much more
of a DEEP understanding than if I try to explain it. AFTER
they start to get it, I can let them know exactly what they’re
doing and how maybe to improve it. But it’s that type
of class where we’re really working your ability to
SEE and your ability to make connection between what’s
happening musically and what’s happening to the body.
And I myself have grown so much through that too.
It’s not the normal fast-food
format, where you walk into a class and walk out immediately
with something new. It is more of a process, and THAT class
is really the example of that.
It was a good lesson to
me because I’ve always been very academic and I think
I used explanation as a bit of a cop out sometimes, without
really knowing it. Because in asking for an explanation, I’m
getting away from actually just DOING and experiencing what
I probably needed to experience. What you just described,
and what I’ve seen from your classes, was a good lesson
to me both as a learner and as a teacher.
Yes. But I didn’t always
realize the connection myself at first. I mean, when I was
a martial artist (and I still am a martial artist) but when
I was studying it, and SOLELY studying it, there were exercises
we would do that I wasn’t sure why we were doing them.
I knew they had “something to do with something”,
and we just went about doing them. And I remember when I started
teaching, some of those exercises disappeared and I just kind
of overlooked them. I realized, after awhile, that there were
things that I could do that the students couldn’t do,
and in trying to figure out why they couldn’t do them,
it brought me back to those small exercises. I didn’t
get them at the time, or what they were giving me. Even later
on, the ability that I had from them, I didn’t equate
it to the exercises because there was no apparent connection
to them. But all of a sudden, you realize, “Damn, I
never used this exercise with these students and I need to
do it.” It’s a funny thing that I don’t
even realize a lot of the things that I’m capable of
doing come from heavy physical training as a young boy. My
body is capable of doing certain things BECAUSE of that type
of training.
Did you choose to go into
martial arts, or was it something your parents put you into
it? How did that all come about?
I always loved it. It was THAT
TIME. It was around the time when the first Karate Kid movie
came out, and there was a huge surge of people taking karate
classes. But even before that, I was always very in love with
Bruce Lee and what he did, and my parents also both adored
Bruce Lee. And they were young during THAT martial arts boom.
My mother even had a little Bruce Lee haircut (frames his
head with his hands and smiles).
T- (laughs).
They both studied Chinese Martial
Arts- Wing Chun- when they were younger, and my mother actually
stopped because she was pregnant with me. And so they both
sort of expected me to get into it. I used to jump around
like a crazy man when I was playing and I thought I knew what
I was doing (smiles). But then my mother would say, “Are
you ready to do something with it yet?” And there was
a gentleman who was one of the managers of the after school
program that I went to while my mother was still working.
We would do all these arts and crafts and stuff, and he taught
martial arts during the evenings and on the weekends. Some
of the people that I was going to school with would go to
the class, and I was a little bit intimidated. But at about
9 years old, I finally got into it. It was strange, but my
mother and my martial arts teacher started dating until I
was about 11 or twelve years old. So he was close to us. We’d
go to the park, and we’d be kicking trees and throwing
chains and weapons at trees. And everything had something
to do with martial arts.
Did you pick it up right
away? Did you know it would become such a huge part of your
life?
It was something that I got a
lot of positive feedback from because I had an affinity for
it right away. So it felt good to continue doing it. Even
years later, some of the people that I started with asked
me, “Are you STILL doing that?” It was the type
of thing that helped define the man that I was going to be,
that I was becoming. It was a clear road to that. It gave
me an identity. And I think that people find that with the
dancing too- they find it gives them something to clearly
define them and to hold onto as far as identity is concerned,
because they didn’t have something like that before
or along the way.
It’s important for people
to have that -something to be good at, something to pride
them selves on- something that others would recognize them
for as they walk through their lives.
How do the two disciplines
compare- how would you compare your martial arts life with
your dancing life – how you as a person compared in
each, or how you got into each of them?
I still consider myself a martial
artist. The physical movements are just now the movements
of dance as opposed to the actual movements of martial arts,
but the approach is exactly the same. I taught martial arts
for about ten years so the teaching part of it all kind of
seamlessly goes together. I definitely didn’t teach
then the way that I teach now. Everything was much more serious,
and only the people who knew me well, on a personal level,
knew that I liked to joke around a lot.
But martial arts was something
that I made a serious endeavor to explore my potential in,
as I do now, with the dance. And the choice for doing martial
arts was definitely a conscious thing. It was always there,
it was something I was good at and I wanted to do. I adored
it. And still do. It was easy to make that serious.
And with dance, I actually just wanted to have a good time
and to have some relief from the seriousness of what I was
doing before. At one point, I was doing both together and
it was starting to get very heavy. I was running from training
at the dojo to rehearsals with Eddie (Torres) and then going
out at night. I’d go home, take a shower and go to work.
I was young and had a lot of energy. And I had that fever
and was constantly looking to get that out of my system. |
