(Vincent M. Mallozzi’s article appeared in The New York Times, 7/8; via Pam Green.)
Raven McRae, a 22-year-old dancer who was trained as an actress at LaGuardia High School, is the only native New Yorker in the cast of “Paramour,” a Cirque du Soleil musical currently on Broadway. Ms. McRae, who spent much of her childhood on Staten Island, lives there with her mother in an apartment in St. George. On Sundays, she commutes by ferry to Manhattan for two performances. Ms. McRae made her Broadway debut as a dancer two years ago in “Motown: The Musical.”
SHOWER WITH SPOTIFY I wake up at 8 and immediately check my iPhone, which is also my alarm clock, to see if stage management left any message regarding schedule changes. I need to catch a 9 o’clock boat into Manhattan, so I run into the shower and use Spotify on my phone to listen to Kendrick Lamar, who I love. I time my shower to the length of two Kendrick songs. I don’t consider him a rapper; I consider him a poet and an artist. He sings so passionately and doesn’t hold anything back, and that puts me in a good mood and inspires me to give 100 percent of myself on stage. Then I’m running out the door without eating breakfast because for me, chewing is just too much work that early in the morning.