But then this ballet teacher came along and gave me something she couldn’t give me.” The two eventually realised they had a common goal and became friends. “She was like, ‘I’m your mother, I’m used to giving you everything you need’. This led to tensions between his teacher and his mother.
His teacher took him, one of the only boys in her class, under her wing and drove him around the city to attend different classes.
He was given a trial run that same day, and was soon taking regular classes. Things are on the up and up.”’ Photograph: Linda Browlee for the Guardian I'd watch the Nutcracker and A Chorus Line over and over. ‘I’ve always thought, “I look great, I can dance, I’ve got some rhythm. “I knew nothing, but I said, ‘If you show me, I can do it.’” “I felt like I could be great at this, and that I could change my family’s destiny if I got it right.” The experience was a baptism of fire, with the teacher shouting out specialist dance terms (tombé and glissé). That was a no-no.’” Underwood walked in, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and insisted the teacher give him a go. “I couldn’t walk out of that building and say to my mum, ‘I didn’t get that’. That might have been the end of it, but as he was leaving Underwood saw some girls practising ballet in the next room.
“One day she said, ‘OK, we’re going to make you an actor.’ She got a book out of the library learn an entire monologue for an audition.” But on the day, he got stage fright and forgot all his lines. His mother wanted him to go the nearby performing arts school, a more promising bet than mainstream school. “I have childhood friends who are no longer with us or who are in prison because of gun crime. “I don’t have any traumatising memories of seeing that body, because when you grow up hearing gunshots, at some point you know that there will be a dead body.” He adds that he was just glad it wasn’t a familiar face. “It stressed my mother out and she would make us lie on the ground until the shots finished.” One night, somebody was killed outside their flat. Unlike his brother, who was into carpentry, and his academic sister, Underwood was more creative, something that manifested itself every time he danced with the neighbourhood kids or customised their jeans with a Magic Marker pen.Īt home, he was nurtured and loved, but says he would hear the sound of gunshots outside every day.
“My parents did the whole American, ‘We believe in you, you can do whatever you want to do thing,’” he says. That I could change my family’s destiny if I got it right.’ Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian
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