Leo Manzari leans forward in his chair, speaking into the phone that I placed between us in order to record our conversation. “Testing, testing, one two three,” he jokes. Leo is a 19 year-old BFA acting major, born and raised in Washington, D.C. A slouchy beanie obscures his mass of curls, and a constant smile adorns his face. Before I start recording, he asks me to watch a short video of him and his brother performing at The Kennedy Center in D.C. I am enthralled by the way the two tap dance. It is as if they are having a conversation, only it is their feet doing the talking. My first question for Leo is whether it is strange to watch himself on YouTube. Concentrating on the screen, he says no and assures me that he will explain after the dance is finished.
Leo Manzari: You asked me why it’s not weird to watch myself [dance]. Dance is a big thing that you have to study your physical [movements]. You can’t just be good at dancing, you really have to craft your body and manipulate it to do different things, like different stretches that aren’t naturally humanly possible. It’s all about studying yourself and then taking yourself to the next level. Being a dancer, I’m used to having to watch myself. It’s not fun all the time. Quite frankly, I don’t like to do it. I don’t enjoy doing it and I don’t do it when I don’t have to, but you have to study yourself in order to know yourself.
Her Campus: Do you watch videos and critique yourself?
LM: Absolutely. That was hard for me to watch just now. Because you know you can constantly get better. That’s what it’s all about, continuing to work on the craft until you get it as good as you can be.
HC: Let’s back up. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background in dance?
LM: I’m Leo Alexander Manzari. I am the youngest of 3 children, single mom. Really great childhood. My mom took very great care of us; put us in dance when I was two or three years old. My sister went in dance first. She is currently 23, my brother is 22. I’m 19. We grew up doing regional and national competitions, which is why I think I got my spine as far as taking s**t from critics – not necessarily paper critics, but people that are just mean for no reason. It’s competition, but I love it. That’s what gave me the competitive spirit – but not too competitive, because that’s self-destructive. And then me and my brother kept training in those competitions, and we met this great man named Maurice Hines, who I would really credit with launching the beginning of my brother and I’s career. We’ve had a long career since then that we’ve built on our own, but I will step back and say that Maurice did create a great platform for us. We did Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies in D.C. at The Lincoln Theater, and that was our first big publicity appearance as the Manzari Brothers (which is primarily known as a tap dance act, though we do all styles of dance.) And from there it took off. We started getting calls after calls to do a lot of stuff at The Kennedy Center, some stuff at The Apollo, some stuff on Fox on So You Think You Can Dance as guests. We weren’t contestants, a lot of people get that confused, but we were guests on the finale. Nigel Lythgoe invited us personally, which was really nice of him. We’ve just been performing ever since.
HC: What made you choose acting as your major?
LM: The thing about majors is that everything is institutionalized, so when you try to explain why you decided to go this creative route as a major, it makes it seem like that creative route is another training or something like that. But being creative is a process, so you break down certain emotional walls that make you want to go in different directions. I started off with dance, and I also make music. So dance and music – like piano and singing and lyrics – really drove my early creative process. Then as I got older, I started seeing the value in blurring the lines between acting, dancing, and music, and just being… that energy that everyone knows what it is but not quite what it is. I don’t look at it as “I’m becoming an acting major,” it’s just like I’m exploring the acting element of the creative process.
HC: Do you take any dance classes at Emerson?
LM: I do not, but I’m working with this guy named Ian Berg from BU. He is putting together a piece and he’s great so I’m taking part in that.
HC: Do you have a favorite moment or most memorable performance?
LM: You have to understand, dancing with your brother – some people have such trouble just speaking with their sibling – but when it comes to forming a dream and an image and a business together, a partnership, it’s so funny some of the stuff that happens. And especially since we’re performing, all that funny stuff happens in front of other people, they just don’t know it. So a funny thing that happened was John (my brother)… the way we do 15 minute sets is we break it apart so we both have time to dance but we also can showcase our solos, whether it’s improv or choreography. I step off stage because he’s doing his solo, and the stage we were on had a big curtain behind it. And usually behind the curtain in a theater you have a brick wall but still more floor. Except there wasn’t more stage behind the curtain. John went to do a big turn… [Laughs] It was a great turn, it was a beautiful turn, and he fell back into the curtain but he didn’t fall off. He fell back into the curtain and he had to do the Jackie Chan wind up to get back on the stage. And I just started busting out laughing.
HC: Do you usually do choreographed pieces, or do you improvise when you’re performing?
LM: The great thing about tap dance is as much of it is a choreography dance, it’s also a very improvisational dance. It allows pockets for improvisation. So the way John and I will choreograph is we’ll set down a base – and we’ve been working together so long that we know when the other is struggling to make the new step, we know that about each other – what we do is we just build off as easily as we can. Basically we build a platform at the beginning of the dance, and we’ll throw some solos in the middle, and then put some more choreo. Even when you’re doing solos you have to remember you’re still on stage. Because if you forget you’re on stage and become not interesting to the audience, it makes half of the stage dead. Even though we do solos, we still frame each other. We improv those solos all the time. Improv is one of my favorite things to do. Absolutely.
HC: Why did you choose Emerson?
LM: The campus is beautiful, but it’s also not a campus. It’s the city, which I love. Boston is an incredible networking city. I only know of a few places where you can be a tap dancer and gain respect and also build a platform out of it really successfully, because people are interested. Boston is really good for tap, even though there’s not a huge amount of it here. There’s a company called BTC, Boston Tap Company, who I’m really cool with. Shoutout to them.
HC: Are you still performing at all, or are you focusing on school this year?
LM: The hardest thing about being in college is having to turn down gigs and possible opportunities to showcase tap. That’s become one of my favorite things: to just go somewhere where people don’t know tap, or even if they do know tap, and just show them tap dance and present it to them in a form that’s digestible. Now I’m not really performing outside with my brother, but I am doing Dani Berkowitz’s project about Israel, that we’re doing in December. So people should come to that. It’s an untitled production as of now, but Dani Berkpwitz is a senior BFA acting major who went to Israel for Birthright, and then worked two internships there over two summers and then came back here, wrote a screenplay about her experience, and held auditions. I am acting in it. She said she wanted to utilize my tap dancing skills, but I don’t know. It’s going to be shown around Boston, so people should see it. Me and my brother are also writing our own show, and I’m writing all the music for the show. I’m about 30 minutes in right now. We’re trying to put that together.
HC: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
LM: Ideally, I really want to work in a Chris Nolan film. Christopher Nolan, the guy that did Batman, Inception, Memento… he is definitely one that I want to work with. Also, I really want to be a part of as many projects as I can and put my two cents and contribution in, just to be able to say, I did that. I think that’s the best way to use what you’ve been given.