Emily Coles began her illustrious dance career at the ripe age of five, prancing on stage with nine other little girls in tutus and slippers. She loved the stage, but the tutu was not a fit. Over the next 20 years, Emily searched for the “right” dance, trying modern,...
Kieren Jameson is a native of New Zealand and moved to the U.S. in 1997. She has no formal dance background, but 15 years ago, she took a women’s salsa class and instantly became hooked. In short order, she was totally addicted: “I like to say that dance is my drug.”...
Ernesto Palma was born and raised in a poor family in heavily Catholic Costa Rica, the youngest of four kids, whose parents divorced when he was five. It was a tough childhood. He was bullied as a boy (including by his own brother). He knew he was gay from a very...
Born in Kazakhstan, Nikolai Shpakov grew up in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, in the Ural mountain region, the only child of an architect father and an attorney mother. He started dancing “before I learned how to walk,” he says, first Russian folk dancing, then...
