Never took formal dance lessons. She just danced the way she felt like dancing, and people were into it. Some pretty big people. She started dancing professionally about ten years ago, and, a few years later, stars started coming to her, asking, “Can you make up this breakdown for me?” Genius. Everything Jamaica does looks like dancing. Even when she’s just standing around talking, her crazy lime-green fingernails look like they’re dancing. If you ask her how she does it, she shrugs and says, “Just listen to the record. It’ll tell you what to do.” The day I met Jamaica, she fractured her foot. She wasn’t even sure how it happened. She was literally just standing there having a conversation with Scooter and, wham, she was out for twelve weeks. Standing on the set of the touring show, she preps me to rehearse the flying trick (sorry to spoil the surprise) along with Nick and Mike, two of the backup dancers. “Dancers are athletes,” Jamaica reminds us. “We don’t get pampered like athletes.
