Taking the Lead: Lessons From a Life in Motion (7 page)

“Are they dancers?” I naively asked one of the older students in my class.

“Dancers? They’re world champions! They’re legends!”

He wasn’t kidding. In the nineties, the Ballases were known as the best of the best in ballroom. Shirley had been a world champ at nineteen with her ex-husband. When Corky came into her life, he was a ballroom beginner. He was from Texas, and his dad, George Ballas, was the inventor of the Weed Eater. It took Corky and Shirley ten years to become champions, but they didn’t rest until they had the title. All the teachers and the studio owners were in awe of them. Once you won a world championship, you usually toured the world teaching and visiting various studios. The Ballases had been going to Provo, Utah, to train the Brigham Young University Latin team since the early nineties, and while visiting, they were approached by Center Stage to teach at the studio for several weeks at a time.

I was skeptical at first, especially because Corky seemed like such a wild card. He was outgoing, silly, and (as his name seemed to imply) very quirky. He delivered his Latin dance class like a Chris Rock stand-up routine, going off on long rants and emphasizing his words with dramatic body movement. When he spoke it was very theatrical. But after just one day, I realized how amazing these two were, both individually and together. They balanced each other perfectly: energy meets elegance, passion meets precision. And they were a whole other level of dancer, with an expertise I had never witnessed before.

So I wiggled my way into the front row of every one of their classes. Corky was hilarious and the coolest guy ever. Shirley was kind of a hard-ass. I say that with the utmost love and admiration, and I know she wears that title with pride. The woman was all about technique, and she never sugarcoated anything. If you screwed up, she told you so: “Derek, that was awful.”

Or she would make you do it over, and over, and over—a dozen or more times if necessary—till she was satisfied. Sometimes my head would pound and my legs would ache, but she kept pushing me and taunting me: “No, not like that. That’s rubbish!” There was just no filter on her—what was in her head came out of her mouth. When we first met, I was a kid with only about six months’ dance experience under my belt, and she scared me a little. Still, I really wanted to make her happy. So I worked harder than I ever had before, just trying to coax a single word out of Shirley: “Good.”

Corky, as I said, was different: a fireball of energy and a real jokester. I was the youngest in Corky’s class and I think he got a kick out of me—the short little blond boy trying to best all the adults in his class. One day, I came into Studio 5 and there were these plastic baseball bats on the floor. No one was around, so Corky started hitting one baseball bat on the ground with a single-time beat. I grabbed two other bats and started doing syncopated times and layering more beats over that. We were just sitting there, smiling and laughing, creating something really cool out of nothing. No drum set, no sticks, just picking up whatever was lying around and setting it into motion. I loved it. I felt inspired. Here was someone who not only shared my creativity but could teach me even more.

The Ballases will tell you that they remember me back then as “the little blue-eyed boy with shiny penny loafers.” They saw in me a restlessness, a burning for knowledge. I was quick on my feet, though not the most technically proficient dancer in the studio. What I needed was direction, guidance, clarity.

I felt so excited every day to come in to learn from them—and I wanted to make that perfectly clear. So on the second day of class, I waited at their car and presented them with a drawing I had done and signed with a flourish. Shirley hung it on the studio wall. The next day, I came with a shiny apple. Some of their classes were age restricted, but they allowed me to attend all of them. It didn’t matter; I could outdance 95 percent of the teenagers and young adults there. The studio was the only place I wanted to be. I even slept there as I grappled with the news of my parents’ divorce. When I was going through my darker days—skipping school, blowing off dance class—it was Corky and Shirley who noticed and asked where I’d been. They had gone away for six weeks to perform out of state, and when they returned, there was no one waiting at their car with a gift or greeting.

The other teachers told them I had been missing classes, cutting school, and getting into all sorts of mischief. Shirley knew it would take a hell of a lot to keep me away from her classes, and she was worried. When she heard what was happening in my home life, she understood and knew she had to intervene. I was lost, and heading down a slippery slope. There seemed only one solution: “Come live with us in England, study dance, compete, and see the world.” I wanted to rush home at that moment and pack my bags. I saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity. How many eleven-year-olds from Utah get to go live in England and travel the world? I didn’t even have to think about it. I was ready to leave right then and there. But we still had to convince my parents. I don’t know how excited they were for me to live so far away from home, but Shirley told them it would be for the best. “He’s got promise,” she said. “And he’ll be a good companion for our son, Mark.”

Had my parents still been married, I’m sure the answer would have been no. But since everything at home was so unstable, this seemed a good temporary solution. Clearly, I was not dealing well with the divorce and needed something to take my mind off it. They agreed it would be a good thing for me to get away until the dust settled.

So I recommitted myself to my dancing. I swore up and down to Shirley that there would be no more shenanigans. I’d buckle down, stop acting like a brat, and get over myself. Shirley expected me to play by her rules. Of course, that was all before I got to know her son, Mark Ballas, and we became partners in crime.

Mark is now one of my
DWTS
compadres and one of my best friends. I consider him a brother. We’ve known each other for fifteen years and we’ve been on eleven seasons together. But when we first met, we hated each other. Total oil and water. I thought he was a stuck-up, royal pain in the ass. We were in Studio 2 at Center Stage, which had a ballet room you are not supposed to even walk into wearing tennis sneakers. Apparently, Mark never got the memo. He just zipped right in there on his K2 Fatty inline skates. He was the spitting image of his dad, a mini Corky, and a year younger than I was—about ten at the time. But he had such a sense of entitlement!

“You can’t wear those blades in here,” I told him.

He smirked and continued scuffing up the floor, as if no one could touch him.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Get out of here with those!”

Again, it was as if I were talking to a brick wall. Given who his parents were, I thought it best not to take it any further—although I would have loved to have mopped the floor up with him!

Mark and I were different. He was really into rock and heavy metal music—bands like Nirvana and Korn.

“You know that that’s the devil’s music, right?” I asked him. I guess some of my Mormon upbringing had stuck. I even got Shirley to snap one of his Green Day CDs in half.

He thought I was an idiot. We were opposite in so many ways. When we first started hanging out, he came back to my place and I showed him my drums. It was the first time he had played an instrument, and he got really into it, banging away. I had this smelly fart spray in my pocket and thought it would be a really funny joke if I sprayed it near him. He thought I sprayed it
on
him and freaked. He was hopping mad and started beating me over the head with the drumsticks.

I really thought he was the biggest spoiled brat, yet there was something about him that I liked. Maybe it was the fact that he was always able to speak to his parents so openly, almost as if he were their equal, even at a young age. Sometimes I was shocked to hear some of the things that came out of his mouth, but I was always in awe of his honesty.

When we first arrived in London, I was so naive. “Wait! They all drive cars here?” I asked Mark. He just rolled his eyes and dragged me along by the elbow. I wasn’t sure what to expect of my new digs in Dulwich Village, a nice neighborhood in South London. I had only been to England once before—the time we competed at Blackpool—and I had barely set foot outside of the ballroom or the airport. I had a pretty romanticized vision of what it would be like. I thought people would be driving around in horse-drawn carriages, wearing monocles and morning coats, and sipping tea all day. Instead it was just a busy city, filled with hustle and bustle and modern conveniences. Mark wanted to know what planet I was from.

He was born in Texas, but had been living in London for several years. This was his home. Shirley and Corky had consulted him before asking me to live with them. They wanted to be perfectly clear: Mark would need to learn to share
everything
, including his room and his toys, and there would be no kicking me out if we had a fight. It was his decision as much as theirs to invite me in.

As curious as I was about London, people were curious about me. I got a lot of funny looks: “Who is this strange American kid moving in with Corky and Shirley Ballas?” They had never taken in a boarder before; people weren’t sure what to make of it. Their house was old but beautiful. I remember the wood-paneled ceiling in the Asian-themed room, the marble fireplace in the living room, and the elaborate chandelier in the dining room. It was all very posh compared to what I was used to in Utah. We had a large backyard and a beautiful park across the street. But the best part? I had never had a brother before, and now I got to experience what that was like.

When we first arrived, Shirley arranged for three different girls to try out to be my dance partner. One of them was Jade. Yes,
that
Jade. I was so happy, and I played out the whole romantic storyline once again in my mind. But when she came into the studio, it was all business. Shirley had me dance with each girl and we evaluated the choices. In the end, I actually didn’t want to partner with Jade. I preferred another girl, Leanne Noble, and am not sure Jade ever forgave me for that. It was the end of our romance: the dancing won out over first love.

Besides dance, there was school. Shirley enrolled us in the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts—a co-ed school for kids ages ten and up who were interested in pursuing careers in the arts. It was very prestigious, kind of like the school in
Fame
but in London. To get there, we had to take three trains, and God help us if we were late (Shirley wouldn’t stand for it). Every morning, Mark and I would get up at seven and race to make the seven forty-five at Herne Hill station. The Thameslink line was always mobbed, and we’d be packed in like sardines, smelling everyone’s underarm deodorant or lack thereof. We rode over the River Thames, past St. Paul’s and the London Eye. The huge Ferris wheel wasn’t even there when I first moved to London; I actually got to see it being built. The train ride was where I daydreamed and did most of my “deep thinking.” I plugged in my minidisc player, listened to my tunes, and stared out the window at the city of London. Then we changed trains to go on the Underground to Barbican. When we got off, we had to walk half a mile to the school. Even in the cold, damp, blustery winter months, I didn’t mind. There was a little breakfast place across from the school, and they made toasted bagels with sausage and brown sauce. I actually looked forward to going to school every day just to get my sausage bagel.

School was from 9
A.M.
to 6
P.M.
In the wintertime, it would be dark when we arrived and dark when we left—we literally never saw sunlight. Italia Conti was the name of the actress who founded the school in 1911. The huge campus is divided into several buildings. Ours was nine stories tall, and we weren’t allowed to use the elevators, so we were climbing up and down stairs all day. We wore uniforms—blue blazers, gray slacks, light blue shirts, and blue ties with the logo of the school stitched in white. The teachers there were a cast of colorful characters. My headmaster, Mr. Vote, was this Australian guy. He had a gray beard and hair, and he also taught history. Miss Day, my science teacher, was a large woman who wore half her head shaved and the other half of her hair in a bob. Miss Matkins, my English teacher, was about four foot five and had this squeaky, high-pitched voice. She walked around in high heels with bent legs. When I had to go away to a dance competition, she was kind enough to do my homework for me by telling me all the answers. Mr. Duwitt taught me math. He was an older man, and when he leaned over to show me how to work an equation, the smell of smoke and tobacco on his body was so pungent, it made me gag. His famous expression was “The mind boggles,” as in, “Derek, you can learn a complicated dance routine yet not figure out a simple simultaneous equation. The mind boggles!”

Principal Anne Sheward had her office on the ninth floor—so most kids rarely went up there. I, however, was a frequent visitor. I hated ballet class, so I would skip it, and my teacher would angrily march me up the stairs for disciplinary action. But Ms. Sheward was great. She would tell me to take a seat, and we would have a cool chat about life for a few minutes. She never scolded or punished me (though we didn’t let my ballet teacher know that). It was a free-spirited school, for sure, and for the first time in my life, I had lots of friends. There was George Maguire, the cool kid and a very talented actor and singer, and Newton Faulkner (then known as Sam), with his ginger hair done in dreadlocks. Sam would skip class and lock himself in the boys’ changing room so he could practice chords on his guitar. Fast-forward six or seven years later, and he was signed to a major record label. I always knew he would make it. Lucas Rush and Desi Miller were my two best friends, the ones I got into trouble with the most. They would bust on me every time I tried to talk in a British accent. But teasing aside, I felt encouraged, supported, inspired. The academy was all about letting us be creative and follow our dreams.

During lunch or in between classes, I would go to the art room—I even had my own key. Once again, I became a bit of a loner, but this time by choice. My friends were always asking, “Where’s Derek?” and that’s where I was hiding. The art room was my sanctuary. My art teacher, Miss Todd, was very eccentric. Her hair was wild, and she dressed like a hipster. She showed me art books filled with paintings and sculptures of naked women. She would take our classes on field trips to all these crazy installations at the Barbican Art Centre and the Tate Modern. Her classes lit my imagination on fire. I didn’t have to obsess over straight lines or shading or capturing an image of something down to the exact detail. Until I met her, I had never seen modern art before. She showed me that art doesn’t need to be technically perfect; it just needs to mean something. I’d look at some scribbles on a canvas and say, “I can do that.” Miss Todd would shake her head and break it down for me. “It’s not scribbles. There’s a story and an emotion behind it.”