Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Perseverance and Tenacity Led These Artists to Success | Black History Month
(upbeat music)
- If anyone ever deters you from following your dream
please, you only got one life to live.
- When you take yourself seriously
that's when everybody else will.
- I'm Dr. Phillip Martin,
I'm a dentist and a professional saxophone player.
- My name is Camryn Taylor
and I am a professional dancer.
- I'm a dentist,
my dad's a dentist,
my brother's a dentist
but also I have been playing music almost 30 years.
I'll never forget it.
I was at my uncle's house in Georgia
and I heard this song.
I was like, I don't know what that is,
but whatever that is that's what I want to do.
- I got introduced to a hiplet when I was 14,
but I came out the womb dancing.
Ballet is very strict,
it's like black or white.
Hiplet just allows me to be exactly who I want to be.
- It has been very difficult for black and brown woman
for classical ballet.
Hiplet is a fusion of the classical point technique
with hip hop, African, Latin, jazz.
It's everything that we're made of.
- The same time I got into dental school,
I got a record deal.
So the label was saying to me
you need to drop these books and promote this record.
My parents and the dental school was like
you need to focus on this dentistry.
I was just like, Oh my God, what do I do?
- What we don't do is string ourselves into places
that we don't fit in.
- [Camryn] I didn't think I was big
until I went to school for dancing.
I was the only,
maybe it was like three other black girls.
- We have had all type of pushback from the ballet purists.
- I used to get comments about how bulky I was
but it's actually helped me with how high I can jump.
People say that you cannot be too big en pointe
because will put too much weight on your ankles.
That's not true.
If you have the strength you can do it.
- You know, you put your mind to something,
it can happen.
It's a beautiful thing.
Both careers take a lot of discipline,
a lot of dedication.
I wanted to keep my music alive.
I would fly to the gig on like a Friday
and make it back on Sunday
and be back for the test on Monday.
- The best advice that Homer has ever given me
is that the discipline is in the fun
- And the fun is in the discipline.
- As long as you show up for yourself and put the work in,
it's gonna be fun,
it's not gonna feel like work.
I tell anyone who is told that there's no space for them
to just make their own space.
- My professors in dental school,
they said to me,
there's music and there's dentistry
pick one,
but you can't do both.
I wanted to do both
and I did.
- They said that I couldn't do hip hop and ballet en pointe,
so I did.
