JAMES: When I was a kid, my mom was an Afro-Brazilian dance teacher, and she used to take us to see lots of dance of all different styles. I saw ballroom and Latin and was just floored by it, so I nagged her until she let me start studying those. I did that until I was thirteen and then I saw some modern dance and really fell in love, so she put me in ballet class because she said that ballet technique helps you with modern or anything else, and she was right. I immediately fell in love with ballet. Everyone’s always looking for guys, so I was taking a beginner class at this little studio near my house and the teacher there also happened to teach at a conservatory not too far away, so she recruited me and offered me a scholarship and then that became all I did for the next six years.

Were you considering pursuing dance professionally?

JAMES: I started a little late—I was fourteen when I started it full time—so I had a lot of catching up to do. For years, through high school, it was something that I would’ve loved to do professionally, but it seemed kind of out of reach. Then I took a couple years off after high school and filled out and kept at it full time and got to a place where it would be an option. When you’re dancing that much and when you’re that committed to ballet, there’s nothing else that’s worth doing. I had gotten into Columbia and deferred admission, so that was always there as a fallback, but I couldn’t imagine what I would do with a degree, what I would study, if I wasn’t dancing all the time. When you’re young, so many ballet studios, mine included, sell kids on the idea that if you don’t have your contract at eighteen then you’re done, that’s it, which, after going around the country and auditioning, I really saw is not true, especially for guys. Nowadays a lot of dancers have gone to college and a lot of dancers are getting contracts in their mid-twenties, so it seemed more doable to be able to go to school and then dance if I wanted to. Then once I was in school, other things started to catch my eye more. I was shown that I could enjoy doing other things and be fulfilled by doing other things. It’s a huge gift. I know a lot of dancers who don’t get to that place until it’s forced upon them, until they’re injured or until they’re laid off or can’t find work.

How did you get started in modeling?

JAMES: I started modeling a little over a year ago. I used to do little stuff when I was dancing, and I had friends who modeled who were pretty successful, and they got to travel and they were paying off their student loans. I knew I wanted to take time off after school, so I figured it was as good a thing to try with my time off as any, and if I could travel and pay some bills, that sounded great. I’d been approached a few times over my three or four years in New York, and it was always in the back of my mind, so I ended up just going for it and reaching out to a few agencies that friends pointed me towards and getting started.

How do you think your dance background has affected how you work as a model?

JAMES: In some ways, it makes it more difficult, because with ballet, it’s all about what you put into it. There’s a lot more control, so the harder you work and the more time you spend in class and the more you immerse yourself in that world, the more you get out of it and the more successful you’ll be That’s not the case in modeling. With modeling, you really put your fate in everyone else’s hands, in your bookers, in your agency, in photographers, in casting directors. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you’re obsessing over how things are going and what you can do differently. But it’s also helped in a way, as far as with photo shoots, because there’s a very particular spatial awareness and awareness of your body that dancing gives you. Ballet technique is all about presenting yourself in the most graceful, effortless way based on the audience on one side of the theater, so it’s helpful because you can play to the perspective of the photographer with a certain awareness. It’s also about the discipline. When I signed, I was forty pounds heavier, I was lifting a ton, I was much more muscular, and then I had to change things, change my diet, change the way that I exercise, just to be able to do anything besides underwear shoots, which is where I was sort of stuck in the first few months. It certainly took me a while to get the legs down to a normal human size.

Do you still feel like you’re a part of the dance scene in New York?

JAMES: Not as much as I would like, and I’m just starting to miss it more and more. When I was in Milan for fashion week, I got to see Teatro alla Scala, which was always a dream of mine. It’s an incredible ballet company and an incredible opera house, and that made me miss it a ton. Every once in a while I’ll do shoots, like this shoot, and as rusty as I feel—maybe I haven’t popped into a split in six months, so I definitely end up super sore and there’s kinks to work out—at the end of a day like that, I miss it, and I get so much more motivated to get back into it after partnering a girl, or after feeling that soreness in my feet or in my hips. It brings me back, it makes me want to do it again. As far as my day to day, we’ll see. Now I have bills to pay and I’m studying for the MCAT’s, so I still feel like an acrobat balancing all these plates.