“‘No’ should be one of your favorite words. Keep it moving. Don’t let it hinder you. Once we understand that, we will be so much better,” advises Antonio “Tony” DeBerry, founder and artistic director of Kreative Minds Through Performance (KMTP), a production company and hub for his Berry Drop Heels/Berry Drop House.
The Cleveland, Ohio native who now lives in Atlanta remembers the first time he heard ‘no’ and admits he did not take it well. “I used to attend a lock-in at the YMCA. A bunch of us teenagers spent the night and would attend a summer concert. One summer Ciara came in and we had to audition for her. It was my first audition ever and I knew all her songs and dances, but that’s now how auditions work,” he explained. “There were 100 kids wrapped around the wall, they put on music, and you freestyle in front of a panel of judges. When it was my turn, I went blank and just started moving around. They called me and told me I didn’t make it. I bawled my eyes out and told my mom, ‘They cut me, they didn’t choose me. I’m, not good.’”
Moving Forward
His mother’s response to his tears forced him to turn what he perceived as rejection of his dance ability into a sustainable mindset change for the future. “My mom said, ‘Tony, calm down.’ Do you want to do this? What do you want to be? You can’t cry every time you hear a 'no.’ She let me cry and then wiped my tears and had me congratulate the other dancers,” he recalled. “I stayed there, and it made me want to work harder, to watch people who got there and see what I could learn from them.”
“Every time I heard ‘no’ after that, I said thank you and moved forward. I knew how it felt at that moment to get a ‘no.’ I worked so hard for them to say ‘yes,’” he continued. “Fortunately, I have mostly heard ‘yes,’ but a lot of dancers don’t. There was no more doubt in my mind. I was never going to let a ‘no’ discourage me.”
DeBerry doesn’t know what his career would have looked like had he received a ‘yes’ that day. “I needed to gain that discipline. I didn’t want to be that person who had the talent and passion but lacked the discipline. If I heard ‘yes’ that day, I wouldn’t be as grounded and as humble,” he described.
Embracing His Identity
“People always say that I was so sure of who I was when I was younger, but I was not. I remember in 10th grade when I told my mom that I wanted to wear cowboy boots and skinny jeans. Boys wore baggy clothes then, but that is not what I wanted to wear. She was nervous for me whenever I left the house,” he recollected. “I appeared so confident, but I was terrified inside because I didn’t know how others would react. Not knowing what another guy would say to me, I had to put on a front that I was big and bad, but I am soft. It was a shield I had to carry, mostly around athletic straight guys.”
He chose his friends based on his identity and discomfort around straight males. “I like singing and dancing. My community had to be those in the arts and like-minded people. I wasn’t very open to making hetero friends or male friends,” he acknowledged. “I would have loved to have straight male friends. I felt safer in my bubble, so mentally I was there a lot. It was easy to put up a front or put on a mask that I was tough or had it all together, but inside, I was trying to figure it out all by myself.”
Growing up, DeBerry did not consider the option of telling people he was gay. “It was not a thing to come out when I was young. There was no question of who you were supposed to be. You were told you are this, so you are. In my case, it was trying to fit a mold that I didn’t feel inside,” he explained. “When I was more open and wanted to put on pumps in public in the early 2000s, I received a lot of flak being an openly and flamboyantly gay Black male. I was walking around like that, suspicious of being jumped or bullied for who I am or who I feel like I am. That can drain or hinder a person and their self-esteem.”
Having his family behind him was critical to that self-esteem. “My family may have struggled financially, but their support was never in doubt. Because I have always had that, I was able to wear the mask around others even though I was scared. I knew my mom, sister, and grandmother were always supporting me,” he stated. “My little sister would learn dance steps just because I wanted to. My cousins would listen to me sing a million times even though I couldn’t sing. Love is so strong in my little family.”
In college, someone called him androgynous for the first time. “I said I am not just because I wear makeup. The only people I could even refer to were B. Scott and RuPaul and I was not them. I was furious and it made me so defensive and upset,” he remembered. “Later that year, I apologized to that person. I didn’t know what it was then, but I am androgynous and embraced it. I became more educated to my own androgyny. I just do it differently than others who are more widely recognized.”
Denver and Learning to Connect
After college, DeBerry briefly moved to Denver, again with strong support from his mother. “She drove 20 hours though she hates driving with me in the car,” he laughed. “Then I had to put her on a plane by herself to go back to Cleveland and she hates flying even more!”
Although there were some benefits to being in Denver, it was not a place he was going to live long term. “There was a strong spiritual and mental connection there. Other people were becoming one with themselves and healing their spirituality. There just wasn’t a lot of industry in Colorado,” he said. “I had some small depression as I felt like I was moving in water. I saw everything around me, but it was if I was not there. Even though I was dancing, it was like I was just sitting there watching it all. I knew I wasn’t connected.”
He recalls someone asking him how he was doing that day. “I didn’t feel anything. I was just living and didn’t how to connect to my dance. Then one day I danced in a duet and when we were done, everyone was crying. I felt lighter after that. I put everything I had into it. Whatever is on your heart and mind, you can use dance to project it and push it out,” he recognized. “Dance is an enhancement. You are sending these little spells out in every move. That is how people become connected to you because they feel it. If you are just moving, they won’t connect to it. As artists, we can be in so many scenarios. We must connect to be seen and felt by people.”
Timing
“I had a plan all mapped out that I would graduate college and be a world-renowned choreographer by age 28. There are all these extra things we put on ourselves. I listen to a lot of interview podcasts, especially people who are doing what I wanted to do and had later starts like Viola Davis and Steve Harvey. They got to where they dreamed of being, but not the way they thought they would,” he pointed out. “Regina Hall said, ‘I will have all this at 28. I did Scary Movie films in my 20s and nothing happened after that until my late 30s and early 40s.’ If you are living, you can be where you want to be. It is a marathon so push to succeed. You must get your mental prepared for the long run.”
He mentioned how not achieving goals in the time frame you envisioned leads to a cyclical mode of anxiety and self-doubt. “You become stressed when you aren’t finding success in the picture-perfect way society dictates. You get anxious because your number of followers on social media isn’t as high as you think it should be or your Instagram account doesn’t look a certain way. When you have seemingly done everything, but you still haven’t worked with who you want to, self-doubt takes over and tells you that you are not good enough,” he explained. “None of that really matters. It is about timing. You may have one vision or one direction you want to go, but God or whoever/whatever you believe may have a different vision.”
Being patient also allows you to find your place in dance. “Yanis Marshall (French dancer and choreographer) was one of the first men I saw in heels. He was so technically trained and carried himself so lightly on his feet. I wanted to replicate that, but didn’t know how to do it,” he recalled. “There has always been dance in heels, just shorter heels. A lot of people in the industry dance in high heels, but not everyone understands that it is much easier when you have a technical background in something like jazz or ballet.”
“Some people do hip-hop in heels, some do more of a striptease. A lot of my choreo and heels training comes from jazz. I was thinking, ‘How can I do this progression in jazz, while aligning with dance? I now mix jazz with a burlesque feel, a classy sex appeal. That is my brand and what I am teaching,” he continued. “Heels dancing is multi-faceted in that there is no wrong way to do it. It is still a niche for men to dance in heels. It has grown in the community a little more, though not vastly, with certain artists doing it. People became a little more accepting when Lil Nas X was doing it after he became widely popular, but we’ve had people expressing themselves like that for many years who were never accepted.”
Mental Health and Seeking Help
“The more we understand that no one on earth has it all together, the better we will be. We don’t have it all together and are all trying to figure it out. Sometimes we need someone who we admire to tell us or hold a mirror up to us. I was having a lot of anger at one point and when I stepped back, I asked myself why I was so angry when I am not an angry person. I needed to talk to someone who could pinpoint what was going on,” he recollected. “Therapy is great. I was so nervous at first. You want to make it seem like you have it all together, but they see through that. My therapist saw through me immediately.”
Dance is healing, but it takes more than that. “We must let our dance community know that therapy is available and can be affordable. There are a lot of things we aren’t aware of that need to be in the forefront. We push dance, videography, etc., but therapy is an avenue for life success,” he communicated. “I deal with managing anxiety. My thoughts overwhelm me at times, so I need to do something to stop thinking. Otherwise, I physically feel everything I am thinking. I get more overwhelmed seeing my schedule instead of just doing it. I can’t explain why my brain does that, but it does. I must focus on the first step, not the next 12 steps. Managing anxiety will look different for everyone, but it helps to slow your breathing and find what works for you and brings you back down to earth.”
DeBerry stresses the importance of checking in on others but doing so authentically. “Know who you put in your circle. You can’t think everyone on your social media is your friend. Some are your fans and not your friends. You need people who you can call, who are your counsel for the business of life. You know who to talk to about what, a circle of close companions you can talk to about anything,” he stated. “They don’t care just about what you are doing in dance, but what you ate today, if you worked out today, how your mom is doing. They ask about your sleep. People who know others' real lives are the ones who can check on one another and keep each other accountable. I don’t hold everyone to that standard. Not everyone needs to check on me or me on them. I do check on those near and dear to me.”
“Some friends you haven’t talked to in a long time, but when you do, you pick right up where you left off. Those are genuine friends. Start small circle group texts with people you can be yourself with. My best friend of more than 10 years (and my former roommate) also lives in Atlanta. We don’t talk every day, but we do check in,” added DeBerry, who suggested cultivating friendships outside of dance or at least talking about things other than dance. “I have relationships outside of dance. Do you hang out with anyone outside of dance, drinking wine, playing scrabble, or whatever you like to do? Let’s not just talk about dance or art, but let's talk about life. It is so easy to get caught up in dance only.”
He believes that it is important to check on others, but also to let them know how you are doing. “Worry about your circle and your loved ones. Reach out to those people because they are the ones also worrying about you. So many other things, you can let fall. It is also OK to love from a distance. We can’t overextend ourselves all the time. Does it serve your purpose to be everywhere all the time?” questioned DeBerry, who made it clear not to underestimate the advice of those close to you. “Someone I trusted told me I should try therapy. Because I trusted them so much, I tried it, and it has been great for me. It has to come from someone you love, admire, and trust to get you out of your own way.”
He has made a habit of starting each day with intentionality about self-care. “We must change our mindset. Stop checking IG as soon as you wake up. Take 5-10 minutes for yourself before liking, tapping, and comparing on social media. I start the day opening my windows and seeing the sun. I turn on motivational/gospel music, walk around my house, pet my dog, sit in front of a window, and thank the Lord. I pray and meditate to do my best to ensure my mind and body are one. I don’t know what the day will bring, but I know what I can bring to the day,” he elucidated.