Ariana DeBose

thumb Ariana DeBose (born January 25, 1991) is an American actress and singer who has received various accolades, including an Academy Award. Quotes I was surrounded by creativity. My mom is a single parent, and we lived with my grandmother for a portion of my youth. My grandma made sure I got into dance. She often took me to festivals; I remember going to the Azalea Festival and being exposed to different kinds of art and music. I didn’t just listen to Whitney Houston—I listened to Dinah Washington, too. I also enjoyed animated films and drawing. My mom was an artist, and she still paints now. I guess you could call her an amateur, but she loves to paint and draw. Those are activities she and I did together frequently. To be perfectly honest, I fell into it. My grandmother saw that I liked to move when music played, so she thought dance was be a good idea. She enrolled me in ballet, tap, and jazz, as many people do for their kids when they’re three years old. I took to it really quickly. I’m a competitive person, so I like being the best at things, (laughing) and I happened to be really good at it. My teachers took a liking to me, and I was bitten by the bug from an early age. I loved dancing. I did. I can’t tell you how I knew, but I did. We had lived in Wilmington, NC, and then moved to New Bern, which meant we had to find a new dance studio. It was financially challenging because, at that point, it was just me and my mom. She was starting out in her professional career, so it was tough, but she took me to Dance Theater of New Bern. The woman who owned it met me and immediately taught me steps, which I did—what I didn’t know was that she taught me steps that her twelve-year-olds were doing, and I was six. She essentially put me on scholarship and allowed me to take as many classes as possible. Yes, absolutely. And it’s that mentality that I keep going back to her for, because she is totally honest with me. She’ll tell me when she thinks I’ve made a mistake or when she thinks I did great. She helps me figure it out. I’ve been through a lot of crazy things in a short span of time here in New York, and I don’t think I would have navigated them without Terrence and Charlotte, who helped guide me through it all. Yes, the business is changing, but they’ve been around it and have so much knowledge. There’s no way I would have known what I know without them. Growing up I was very private about who I liked as far as sharing with my family aside from my mom, so for a while I think they assumed I only liked boys. I never brought anyone home because I never saw the point of introducing someone into my family circle unless I felt like I wanted to be with them for a long time. I suppose you could say I “came out” about Jill to my family. I will say my grandparents made me a bit nervous when I decided to have that conversation given generational differences and political beliefs, but it was pretty casual and they already knew anyway. They love me and are incredibly supportive regardless of our political differences—and that’s that. Interview by Kelly d’Amboise;By Amy Dickerson on June 9, 2016 External links Category:Actresses from North Carolina Category:Women singers from the United States Category:Living people Category:1997 births Category:Women born in the 1990s Category:Academy Award winners Category:BAFTA winners Category:African Americans Category:LGBT people