About Me

About Me…

Jim Becker 

I am a Cleveland-based education professional, theatre artist, retired show boy, and occasionally sharp-tongued observer of the performing arts. I studied acting and dance at Marymount Manhattan College; I taught dance, theatre, and visual art at Harlem School of the Arts; I worked with National Dance Institute and Juilliard; and I hold certifications from American Ballet Theatre’s National Training Curriculum and The Cecchetti Council of America. 

As a director and choreographer, my credits include Disney Theatricals’ The Lion King Kids & Jr at Harlem School of the Arts (The Herb Alpert Center); international choreography for Light Opera of New York; off-off Broadway work at Theatre for the New City in New York City; Baldwin Wallace University; The Cassidy Theatre; and Cleveland Ballet. As a member of Actors’ Equity Association, I’ve performed in national tours, in award-winning regional productions, appeared with New York City Opera, and spent five years with Disney Cruise Line as a dance captain, swing, and lead singer. 

I owned my own small business: Jim Becker Personal Training, LLC, where my company served as the official fitness training partner of Broadway’s Tony Award winning revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Additionally, I’ve worked with television stars and Oscar-winning producers on top of training anyone and everyone who walked through my Harlem studio looking to spend time exercising. 

Ohio beginnings: mediocre studios and secret excellence... 

I grew up in Ohio, where my first formal training came from a decidedly mediocre dance studio, just outside of Cleveland, whose name I politely decline to print. I was Mike from A Chorus Line - my mother signed my twin sister up for tap lessons without me and it dashed my five-year old little heart. I demanded I have the chance to dance with my sisters and all my girlfriends from down both ends and sides of the streets in the community where we lived in the cigarette-smoking seat-belt suggestion-wearing wild west that was the midwest in the 1980s. Boys just didn’t dance. I was the only boy at the dance studio who lasted more than a few years and went 1st grade through high school graduation. 

My real dance training happened by watching weekend cable television and copying the moves of dance greats like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. I remember seeing the Nicholas Brothers flying down those stairs and from the tops of music podiums. I, to my dad’s great surprise, could attempt all the steps. If boys “weren’t allowed to dance,” outside of the Becker household, you wouldn’t know it from within. As a kid, both my mother and father were excessively supportive in my dance training without ever entering ‘stage-parent’ territory. 

I also had a secret dance education in the basement of the great Dame Highbarre. Ms D gave community lessons in her basement for years for $10 drop-in class rate. She had studied in NYC with the great Hank Fratchett. A small circle of girls from dance and I, once we got our drivers’ licenses, would sneak off for small group-classes with Ms D to improve our competition skills. The unspoken rule was simple: if you wanted real corrections and positive reinforcements through imagery and appropriate critique you went to the dance studio basement at Ms Dame Highbarre’s house on West 130th Street. 

Home stage, blurred lines... 

How about the community theatre experience, my little turtle doves? For most of that terrible story, you must wait for my book Backstage Predators: an Apprentice’s Theatre Tail. But here’s a little taste below: 

I also grew up within a local college’s community theatre program; performing in, working backstage on, and setting choreography for dozens of productions within the facility’s stages during my amateur tenure. That childhood home eventually hired me back; after my freshman year of college I was hired to teach the dance curriculum and choreograph all the shows for the theatre program I attended as a kid for almost a decade. 

Looking back as an adult, I’m candid about how damaging some of the industry norms seemed at that theater during my time there as a kid. I believe some of the adults who trained me, and then hired me later, helped normalize a culture where significantly older actors pursuing under-18 participants from the daytime youth classes was treated as quirky gossip instead of something that needed real adult intervention. On reflection with the trauma-informed care training I’ve had, I feel like practices then were a failure to protect some young people trying to get a start in the business. 

Nonetheless, I spent hours and weeks that turned into years teaching steps to kids that ended up on the stage with everyone’s families watching. For many future Broadway and dance professionals we had in the program, I hope I was an important positive influence on their formative dance training. 

Real artistic opportunity wrapped in dysfunctional, boundary-blind systems is a recurring theme in my story -  and a major reason my current voice may sound sharp, skeptical, and protective of young performers. 

New York City, Magic Kingdom, and beyond... 

I moved to New York City to attend Marymount Manhattan College, where (as I like to remind people) I was accepted to both the dance and acting programs simultaneously. The first double major, or so I was told. The plan was to live the BFA dream. Reality intervened when work showed up sooner than the diploma. 

I left school for the North American tour of Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I played Dick, Andy, and solo dancer at the entr'acte of Act II. I was hired, in part, because I was a hoofer and the director wanted to make the “Arkansas” number a show-stopping clog number. 

The tour was followed by a summer teaching in Ohio, then a fall in Orlando as a Kid of the Kingdom Dancer. I loved working at Disney World so much, I went back to audition for them and was placed on the Disney Magic after a few months in another North American tour: Barry Manilow’s Copacabana. Travel calls, fight and lift calls, quick changes: that’s where I figured out that the real education was happening on the road, not just in the studio. 

Alongside performing at this time in my life, I built directing and choreography credits ranging from local community theatre productions to college sponsored scholarship fundraisers. Additionally, I taught at many local Dolly Dinkle dance studios (look for my upcoming memoir about it all), sandwiched some time between the “Fame” and “So You Think You Can Dance” eras of dance school suburban infrastructure booms. 

Harlem School of the Arts: the overnight hire and the grandniece... 

My formal teaching career in New York really started thanks to a panicked Facebook post and a grandmother with excellent taste. 

In 2011, I saw a last-minute job posting on the New York City Dance Teachers Facebook page. It was around 11:30pm after a long Sunday double shift at Sarabeth’s West in the Upper West Side. The post needed someone to start teaching at Harlem School of the Arts (HSA) on the following Monday morning. I got in contact with the original poster, we spoke on the phone, and he literally  said to me “you realize you’re starting this job in about eight hours.” Yes. I was aware. 

On my first day, my first 8am class had a Skyler, a Skye, a Kaya, and a Kaisla all in the same room. We survived each other. Over the eight-week summer program, one grandmother started paying particular attention to my class. Her granddaughter was in my group; the grandmother herself was a major donor to the school and a Broadway legend. My student’s mother was starring on Broadway at the time. 

The grandmother was Phylicia Rashad. She reportedly nudged Niki Spruill - the outgoing dance chair at HSA, who had just come back from maternity leave - and asked “Who is that man teaching my granddaughter?” Ms. Spruill said something honest, along the lines of “I don’t really know; he’s a new summer sub; I haven’t worked with him.” Ms. Rashad leaned in and said, “Hire him.” 

A small, but important detail: Phylicia Rashad is sisters with Debbie Allen! I had Debbie Allen’s grandniece in my class! Debbie Allen is one of America’s most lauded and sensational dancers and choreographers of our time. The moment effectively relaunched my teaching career after my performance years. It told me that what I did in the room with the kids mattered - and that people who knew what they were looking at could see it. Before pivoting back to arts education, I had more than a decade to dance - but the housing market crash and subsequent recession had other plans. 

I did one more show after that summer - Miss Saigon in Maine. The President and First lady came again; he was in a wheelchair this time. I consider that my swan song as a stage performer. After Miss Saigon, I shifted into personal training and dance instruction exclusively, and I stopped auditioning. I can give full effort to multiple jobs, but I can’t be a part-time auditioner. I always admire performers who can juggle day jobs at an office or real estate agency and still chase Broadway. I couldn’t be both a fully present personal trainer and half-available actor. Something would have broken, and it wasn’t going to be my clients or my new baby - my personal training business. 

Not long after, a theater in Long Island that had tried to hire me for years offered me a role in White Christmas. They essentially said,  “All you need to do is come in, show us a few tap steps, and the job is yours.” I looked at my training schedule, my New Year’s marketing plans (the season when everyone suddenly wants to quit smoking, quit drinking, and start exercising), and I realized I couldn’t responsibly disappear to do eight shows a week while trying to launch my small business’s largest annual marketing campaign. I turned down the role. That was when I knew I would never experience another curtain call. 

Disney Cruise Line: five years, one exit, two exes... 

Earlier in my career, before my Harlem apartment became a gym and before Facebook, I spent five years with a fortune five hundred company on the water. I worked for Disney Cruise Line (DCL) as a dance captain and swing - covering all the male tracks - and often as lead singer. I learned, and taught, every male role in the repertoire, built a reputation for keeping casts sharp and safe, and quietly took note of the power dynamics that would later help feed my advocacy. 

I ultimately left being a manager at the largest entertainment company in the world after a series of incidents, including a producer who got fresh with me long before the #MeToo movement gave the wider public language for that kind of behavior. 

My departure wasn’t small for the company: it took two of my former lovers to replace me. My former dance partner took over the swing dance captain track, and my former duet partner took over as lead vocalist. They had reconnected by this point. Not only did two of my exes replace me at my former job - they were together in my old bed(s). A major entertainment brand quietly needed two of my former boyfriends, romantically committed to each other, to do the work I once did alone. 

Harlem Studio: a live-work lab for Broadway bodies... 

Ironically, my biggest contribution to the New York Musical Theatre world may not have been as a performer at all, but as a small business owner and personal trainer. 

After leaving cruise ships and that final run of shows, I trained clients all over New York City for about eighteen months before converting my Harlem apartment into a hybrid live-work studio. Two-thirds of my unit became a fully functional gym and office; I lived dorm-style in my remaining bedroom, with a hot-plate and a mini-fridge. I lived in one room and worked in the others. It was odd, but it worked. 

From that base, I worked with dancers and performers from major ballet companies, Broadway shows Hamilton, Shuffle Along, Mary Poppins, Tuck Everlasting, Wicked, Amazing Grace, Chicago, Hello, Dolly!, Anything Goes, Donna Summer Musical, Kinky Boots, A Chorus Line, Evita, Les Miserables, Rocky, and more. I even had a client win a special Tony award after I’d helped get him into fighting shape for his big Broadway return. The Times mentioned he’d hired a trainer to help him fill the role of the actor before him (who’s 20 years his junior). Fuck, The Times can be pretentious. Funnily enough, I also had multiple DCL performers hire me to train them into life-raft flipping shape in between contracts. 

I noticed a pattern: my clients were booking jobs. Cross-training became a strategic tool, not just a buzzword. I built sessions around specific choreography, partnering, and stamina demands of their jobs. 

I also devised a specific form of client appreciation. When a client opened in a show, I would buy tickets to go see it. You support my job, I support yours. I always found the NYC artists’ community extremely supplementary. This gave me the chance to take some of my corporate clients out on the town (and backstage), but also gave me the chance to see my clients’ work to study the demands of their job and work it into our sessions. I would usually send a care package backstage: a practical piece of workout equipment and a dozen cookies from Schmackery’s or another midtown bakery. My philosophy was your fitness trainer should support your body, your artistry, and your need for sugar at intermission. 

During this time, I founded Superhero Bootcamp in multiple locations in Manhattan including at  Harlem’s Jackie Robinson Park where everyday New Yorkers showed up at sunset to move like comic book characters (though, we dropped the comic themed script early on). All the while, I continued teaching dance in Manhattan, Long Island, Fishkill, and Pelham, blending technical training with cross-training knowledge... and often times singing while doing step-ups. 

Training, Presidents, and a talk show KA-WEEN... 

I never fully stopped performing until I chose to. My regional work included a production of Guys & Dolls at the Ogunquit Playhouse, where I was a featured guy and Runyonland Pickpocket. At one performance, former United States President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush came to see the show. Almost every show in Maine (and Houston area of Texas) the Bushes would buy out a matinee performance and fill the auditorium by inviting their closest 800 friends. After the show, we all met on stage with the President, First Lady, and their Secret Service, for a meet-and-greet and photo-op. Barbara Bush went to shake my hand and said “Oh, we loved him.” I took this little pickpocket role very seriously and, apparently, the wife of the most powerful American in my youth noticed. 

I had the surreal experience of performing for the President and First Lady more than once in Maine. In my swan song performance, I played a rough-edged marine and performed a salute for President Bush. My father, uncles, and grandfather all served in the military, but I couldn’t due to restrictions on gay men serving openly (at the time). All the Becker men who wore the uniform, I was the only one whose daily work routine was witnessed by a visiting world leader - the President of the United States of America came to see me work and applauded my work. Our work. 

Oh, and the Governor of Florida, their son, Jeb, was also there. 

Within six months of the First Lady openly confessing her love for me, beloved syndicated international daytime American talkshow host and talk radio personality Wendy Williams told the world she loved me. 

My roommate loved watching The Wendy Williams Show every day and convinced me to go to a taping with him. It was the most fabulous of audience experiences (and way more chic than Ricki Lake’s). Ms Williams had high-end hair products and MAC makeup stations for guests to look their best. We had been emailed, prior to taping, of the ‘formal business’ dress code. I wore a double windsor Italian silk white tie and a pink Express collared pressed shirt. 

While waiting backstage, my roommate went to go spray down his pompadour while this Topik-covered late-20s chorus boy was avoiding certain angles of overhead lighting. At some point I found myself drowning inside a vortex of bridge and tunnel young ladies, who were huge fans of the show, and a middle-aged white producer. The producer was asking everyone in the circle for comments for the ‘Hot Topics’ segment. 

The topic (not Topik) was Kim Kardashian’s 2010 breakup from NFL star Reggie White. All the young ladies in the mix had their thoughful honest and respectable opinions on the devastation and heartbreak that was the departure of commitment between the celebrity couple. “I’m just glad they’re not together,” I said “because now I have a chance... and I rock a two piece just as good as she does.” I received the bolted-eyed ire from the ladies of Long Island and New Jersey. The sassy Manhattan man in pink had tried the least and succeeded in this social task of capture the flag. 

It came time for my big television moment to walk up to the mic and say my little shtick. Ms Williams had found herself in a detailed explanation of the proceeding Hot Topic, and said to the world “there is this gorgeous man in a nice pink shirt waiting to say something.” Oh, my gosh! Thanks, Wendy!!! All my gay friends in their Chelsea hair salons were watching. After my joke about dating Reggie White she said “I love him.” Then she pointed right at me. 

Wendy Williams and I never saw each other after that. Right now, she’s being held, allegedly, against her will in a memory care unit of a hospital in Manhattan. 

After our appearance, the show contacted my roommate many times to ask us to come back stating how Wendy really like us and wanted to see us again. I always was so touched by that... and impressed by how well Wendy Williams ran her show. On commercial breaks she was the boss. I’ve been to other tapings where the guy with the headset is the boss. 

God bless and keep Wendy Williams. 

Cleveland ballet, outreach, bodies, and values... 

Eventually, I returned to Northeast Ohio and took the role of Education Outreach Manager at Cleveland’s big ballet company. On paper, it was everything I cared about: a major ballet company; school and community partnerships; the chance to build a team of strong teaching artists. I did exactly that - hiring qualified, certified, thoughtful dance educators to represent the company, and the art, in classrooms. 

The relationship fractured when one of the teaching artists I hired - a skilled educator and mother of four - was suddenly deemed inappropriate to represent the company’s image to young girls. 

I was told that if “someone like that” taught for the company, “little girls would see that [body type], and think that’s okay.” The justification involved speculative horror stories about ankles failing on pointe under a heavier frame. As a trainer and educator, I’ve worked with dancers of many body types; I recognized this as fatphobic mythology dressed up as concern. Once it was clear the problem was optics, not competence, I finished what I needed to and left. 

In the months that followed, the ballet company itself became the subject of public controversy and news coverage over governance and conduct. By then I was already gone listening to the drama unfold on public radio news coverage on my drive to my next job. 

I would never be the polite face of an institution that shames dancers’ bodies behind closed doors. 

Teaching artist work: the country and the big place... 

After leaving the ballet company, I shifted into more direct classroom work. I served as a teaching artist in country counties in Ohio for a season; working directly for the public school system and investing into the state teachers retirement fund. I was the first man they hired... after almost two decades. 

I was told, more than once, that “Having you here will be a good thing. It will prove men can do it.” 

No pressure. 

And a strangely strong sentiment of employment when you’re just trying to teach three-year-olds how to dance like a triangle, circle, and square. Feeling like the entire case for men in early childhood arts education resting on my shoulders in 2023 was a new kind of pressure. 

At my exit interview, I asked a straightforward question: how many men had applied, and how many were presumed to be unfit to teach preschool dance because of a Y chromosome? Linda (from Human Resources)’s answer was vague. 

The season following I spent a year in the Education Department at the largest (and self-proclaimed “oldest”) regional theater in the country: The Cleveland Play House (four words - we got an email about it). Though the job description emphasized teaching social emotional learning classes and theatre games to students K-12 in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, we all ultimately ended up working in roles none of us were trained nor prepared for. As a new leadership arrived, the demands on the education teams grew, and soon we were all expected to work full-time hours in our schools and then take on night and weekend shifts ushering for Fiddler on the Roof - effectively turning our 40-hour five-day work week into a 50-hour seven-day work week. All of us were exempt. 

You don’t know shit. Four words -  I sent an email about it. 

My breaking point was simple: I was expected to skip my nephew’s fifth birthday party to usher Fiddler again. Instead, I gave my two weeks notice. 

During my time, I never once witnessed the artistic director or managing director attend a single education event or meeting, never introduced themselves to the teams, never acknowledged my classes and schools who attended their shows. 

At my exit interview, the HR representative took a deep breath and then a great sigh stating “we’ve had so many [workers quit] this month.” Then we spent the next 30 minutes kvetching to each other about the culture and working conditions of the company. 

My entire performing career I never worked anywhere lower than a Lort-C house; and here I was losing my drive and ambition and burning out at a Lort-D theater. One being led by a man who doesn’t know the difference between an usher and a “uh, sure?” 

Where I am these days... 

Today, I work as an Out-Of-School Time Lead Site Coordinator at a fabulous school district outside of Cleveland. I apply everything I’ve learned - from touring musicals to Harlem shows and bootcamps to fraught boardrooms - to build programming that centers on the whole child and their wellbeing. Through a trauma-informed care lens, I design before-and after-school experiences that give students safe, structured, and joyful spaces to move, create, decompress and feel seen. 

When I’m Not Working... 

In my spare time, I spend as much time as I can with my dog. I’m a hi-fi enthusiast and audiophile who can happily lose a weekend re-belting a cassette deck and re-padding 8-track tapes. I’m also a gamer and long time lover of simulation games. I like to perform light advocacy work in support of gay, trans, and larger LGBTQIA+ causes, lending whatever voice and experience I have to efforts that make life a little easier and honest for the next generations. 

Why my voice sounds the way it does... 

My writing voice - whether reviewing The Nutcracker or emailing sitting government officials - can be sharp, unsentimental, and occasionally bitchy. That edge comes from my lived experiences and world travels. 

Underneath it all, I’m still partly the bright-eyed kid from Ohio who wanted to dance, sing, and belong. The difference now is I’m old enough - and smart enough - to insist the next generations should get to do all that with better protection, honesty, and care than I was given. 

Every body deserves the chance to dance. 

"You only get so many pirouettes in life, so make each turn count."


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AI assistance: This bio was prepared with research and drafting support from an AI model. All judgements and words are my own and typed by moi.

This is my personal commentary and recollection. Where I describe events, I’m describing what I observed and how I understood it at the time; readers should not treat this as a statement of verified fact beyond what I explicitly document.