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Actress & Dancer/Choreographer Carrie Ann Inaba Discusses the Curtain of Fear Surrounding HIV/AIDS
by Paul E. Pratt
Carrie Ann Inaba can talk about “posture,” “carriage,” and “stage presence” for hours. Just ask the millions of viewers who tune in every week to see her dole out honest—sometimes scathing—critiques to Tinseltown competitors on television’s top-rated Dancing with the Stars. Unlike ballroom dancing, where she’s an expert, Inaba says it’s much harder to determine what’s “right and wrong” when it comes to HIV/AIDS.
“Here in Hollywood, people have wild imaginations,” she notes about what she has heard about such things as the origin of HIV. “[But] they also have access to what might be more ‘confidential’ information. I don’t know what’s the truth and what’s not. I’ve heard so many theories.”
Uncertainty of this nature seems unusual for Inaba, who rocketed to fame along with Dancing with the Stars during the summer of 2005. An estimated twenty-four million-plus Americans tuned in to watch soap star Kelly Monaco defeat television announcer John O’Hurley to win the season one finale. The second season proved equally popular. “We held our own against Survivor,” Inaba says gleefully. Throughout both seasons, Inaba’s evaluations have remained so to-the-point many fans consider her “mean.”
“Honesty isn’t always appreciated,” Inaba opines. “But the only way people are going to improve is if they know what they’re doing wrong. If you tell people everything is great when it isn’t, they will never get better.”
Whereas she can tell others how to correct fancy footwork, Inaba’s not so certain about HIV/AIDS. While the professional dancer and choreographer-turned-celebrity judge has strong beliefs about the illness, she doesn’t just waltz around sharing those. “I feel like I don’t know enough to speak on it from an educated point of view,” Inaba declares. “I even heard one very compelling theory that it’s all made up.”
Inaba pauses to reflect, then pushes on. “That’s one theory,” she says. “But I saw someone die of AIDS!”
On subjects where she is educated, she speaks freely. Having studied dance from the age of four, she’s more than “well-schooled” in fox trots, the rumba, and jive, is an expert in the salsa, cha cha, and quickstep, and knows the infamously difficult pasa doble inside and out. She graduated cum laude from University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in World Arts & Cultures.
Still HIV/AIDS confuses Inaba. She says that, as she suspects is the case with many of her generation, the topic is awkward. “Having this conversation makes me uncomfortable,” says Inaba, “It makes me nervous.
“It’s such a touchy subject, AIDS,” Inaba says. Even a quarter-century into the battle, she says there is not enough awareness about basics. “What is HIV? What is AIDS? How does it affect you? What really happens to your body? It’s something people are so afraid to talk about. Sadly, we can’t talk about it like we would cancer.
“There’s some strange shame wrapped around [HIV/AIDS], which I’ve never understood,” she says. Based on her own experiences, when it is all boiled down, she feels the reason is simple. “It’s like a curtain of fear.”
Fear seems largely foreign to this exceedingly self-confident woman. Inaba has built her career through a series of calculated—and seemingly fearless—risks and steps forward.
She was “discovered” as a high school student in the eighties. Soon after graduation, she was signed to Japan’s Pony Canyon Records. Inaba quickly left her home state of Hawaii for the Land of the Rising Sun, where she was primed as a pop star. “They groom you over there, at least [they did] at that time,” Inaba says. “It was crazy! The industry there is very different than it is here.”
In addition to releasing three hit singles and beginning college to learn the language, the teen singing sensation did television and concert performances around the country. Despite her success, by the time she hit twenty, Inaba was ready to return to the U.S.
It was the height of the early-nineties HIV/AIDS pandemic, and news of the disease and its impact filled headlines daily. Inaba says coming of age sexually and emotionally in those years left a permanent mark. “Generations before us grew up with free love,” Inaba asserts wistfully. “They weren’t all wrapped up in fear. I grew up with the fear of catching HIV, the fear of becoming infected.”
Inaba says HIV/AIDS hindered “the full expression of love and intimacy and warmth and getting close to somebody.” “[Sex] always had off to the right of it this shadow—fear of this disease,” she says. “There are precautions you can take, but even with those you wonder if you’re going to be safe. Or at least I do. It’s very bothersome, to say the least.”
Inaba erupts in laughter, breaking the tension of the moment. “Seriously, I actually think it’s terrible my generation grew up that way.
“We grew up thinking of love and intimacy as a way of catching something which could kill us,” she says bluntly. “That’s how it was presented to us. I think that really shaped humanity those days. It shaped American culture. People are very withdrawn from society and afraid to get close. I find myself very lonely—often.”
For Inaba, one way to avoid loneliness is through work. After Japan, the Hawaiian beauty landed on the early-nineties hit sketch-comedy series In Living Color on Fox as a member of its dance troupe, the Fly Girls, working with superstars such as Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, and eventual Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx.
“It was such an incredible experience,” Inaba acknowledges. “Some of the things we did on that show were very much ahead of their time. The diversity of the cast and the social commentary really pushed the envelope.
“We were all so close,” she recalls of her three seasons on the show. “We had so much fun. It wasn’t work at all. It was like being part of a family.”
All the more reason Inaba’s first brush with HIV/AIDS turned out to be so devastating. She remembers vividly losing a friend from the series to the disease in 1990. “Troy,” a makeup artist for the Fly Girls—which included a then-unknown dancer named Jennifer Lopez—contracted HIV. In a very short time, he was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. Three days before his death, Inaba visited him in his hospital room.
“I was heartbroken,” she says. And scared. “At that point I didn’t know anything about [HIV/AIDS]. I thought, ‘Maybe in three years they’ll figure out [that] if you sit too close to someone you can catch it because it really is airborne.’”
Thoughts of her friend—“Troy was such a wonderful man and took such good care of us!” she intimates—pushed Inaba through her fear. “He was the one suffering,” she shares. “He was the one whose body was deteriorating right in front of his eyes. His mind wasn’t. I thought some of my other friends would go, but nobody went.
“It was horrifying,” Inaba remembers, her voice noticeably cracking. “His body was so emaciated. His color wasn’t right. You could see it in his eyes, though, that it was still Troy—and he was scared to death.”
The multitalented entertainer’s composure breaks. She pauses to catch her breath, then acknowledges, “Oh my God, I’m starting to cry.”
It’s already been an emotional week for Inaba. The second season of Dancing with the Stars—which started with such celebrities as soap star Lisa Rinna, Oscar-winner Tatum O’Neal, and rapper Master P, among others—is already more than halfway through. Inaba says celebrity judges Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli, and she find each decision to send another contestant home increasingly difficult.
“We’re so invested in each other at this point,” Inaba said earlier in the telephone interview. “We see them grow and develop. Last night we had to eliminate Tia [Carrere].”
Though the women had no chance while taping the show, Inaba lets on she would like to socialize with the former competitor when the season wraps. After all, they have much in common. Both women are from the fiftieth state—and got their big movie breaks courtesy of comedic genius Mike Myers. (Carrere started her career in the classic Wayne’s World films; Inaba was featured in Myers’ Austin Powers franchise.)
“She was ready to go home and be a mom to her newborn daughter,” Inaba points out. “But it was still sad. I cried!”
Before crowning the season’s final three—second runner-up WWE diva Stacy Kiebler, first runner-up NFL Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, and champion Drew Lachey of 98 Degrees—there would be several more opportunities for Inaba to cry. Those decisions still over a month away, Inaba taps into the same reserve when she is discussing hugging her friend Troy in his hospital room days before he succumbed to AIDS.
“I remember thinking that, no matter what fear I was having, I needed to just get over it,” she says. “I knew it was much more important to give him what he needed because he probably wasn’t going to be here much longer. It was a really profound moment for me—and I am so glad I went.”
Years later, the experience served Inaba well. She flashes back to how she responded when given a second opportunity to comfort a colleague and friend during his final battle with HIV/AIDS. They met as dancers on Madonna’s 1993 The Girlie Show World Tour.
Inaba says it was a “dream come true” to work with Madonna. “She is someone I have always looked up to as not only a brilliant performer but an extremely smart businesswoman,” she declares. To join the act she boldly shaved her head. She was first to take the stage during each Girlie Show performance and, for the ninety seconds before Madonna appeared, the then-twenty-three-year-old performed what she calls a “combination of Cirque du Soleil and stripper routine,” sliding down a fifty-foot pole of flames.
In the years after the show closed, a makeup artist who worked on it passed away without Inaba knowing. However, when she heard a fellow dancer was hospitalized with AIDS, this time she did not hesitate.
Joined by a mutual friend, Inaba says the three enjoyed “a nice day” together. During a trip far less “traumatic” than the one shared with Troy, Inaba said “good-bye” to her former coworker. “He was so grateful to see us,” she says.
“He was just one of the most beautiful human beings,” Inaba professes, “He was so popular! Everybody loved him, but when he got sick, not many people visited.”
According to Inaba, fear—from both her friend who was sick and those who knew him—caused this. “He didn’t want people to see him like that,” she says, “And people didn’t want to visit because of fear of the unknown. Nobody wants to get too close, which is unfortunate.
“That’s what’s so frustrating about this disease,” Inaba declares. “There’s so much fear around it, people aren’t able to do what’s proper. They’re not able to say goodbye or be supportive. They don’t even know what to say or do, myself included.”
Though people tend to look for “right” and “wrong” in all matters, Inaba believes compassion cannot be approached this way. “There are five billion people in this world, so there are five billion different ways of being, and I doubt any of those are right,” she says. “The only thing I think is truly wrong is intentionally hurting other people.”
Inaba can draw one parallel between life and dancing: Both depend on balance. “You have to find a balance between living it to the fullest and what makes you happy,” she explains. “Going after your dreams to the best of your ability whatever the costs and living safely so you live long enough to enjoy.
“It’s a weird balance, but it’s what we all struggle with,” Inaba concludes. “I just follow my heart.”
Paul E. Pratt interviewed Shelley Morrison for the October 2005 issue. Read more of his features by logging on to www.paulepratt.com.
April 2006
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