“I've been dancing since I was 5 years old and I always loved it. But I never thought it was realistic as a choice of work,” Stacy Walker said as she paused during her dance routine.

For Stacy, the moment she realised that she wanted to be a dancer came suddenly after she finished her undergraduate degree studying communications and psychology.

“I was driving to my first day of work at 8:30 am and I thought ‘I'm not going to drive like this to work every morning’. It just seemed crazy to me. So I quit right then and there.”

This revelation came as a surprise to Stacy since she feels that her personality is “way more into structure and schedule so I'm surprised that I didn't take to that.”

Dancing turned out to be a perfect career for her because it makes her “uncomfortable and it makes me step outside the box and I never know when I will have my next job. They say the hardest part of being a dancer or being a choreographer is not working. The works easy. It's the not working. That's not easy.”

Stacy Walker has achieved success in her career as a dancer and choreographer working with some of the most famed entertainers. But she found out early that in the arts you never know when your next pay check is coming.

“Save your money, save your money because it's so unpredictable,” Stacy said with a smile. “It's such an amazing career, I think, because you can travel and meet wonderful people from all over the world and it's easy. It's fun. So it's such a great job. But again, the not working is the hard part.”

Stacy has felt a certain panic at times when there was no work around, a sense of “what am I going to do?” And for Stacy, experience has shown this can all change in an instant. “And then, all of a sudden, you are just busy all the time. Swamped working, working, working, working. That's how it goes for everybody.”

There many types of work in the field of dance that Stacy has experienced from working with professional dancers for a performance, or as choreographer and even as a Creative Director for TV shows.

“My last job was on a TV show working with actors. A lot of times on TV you're working people that aren't dancers and there is an art to making non-dancers feel comfortable dancing and making them look good,” she recalled.

Stacy always finds it fun to work with non-dancers and to make them have a good time and feel good about doing it. She knows how it feels to be fearful of doing something that you are not used to doing. “If someone asked me to sing. Yeah, I would be mortified, mortified” said Stacy with a nervous laugh.

Stacy has a very different take than most people to work. “Work for me are days where I'm not scheduled to report to dance rehearsal or performance because then I've got to figure out what I'm going to do all day.”

“As a dancer, going to work is easy. Someone tells you what time to get up, where to go, what you're going to do all day, feed you, get paid and then you go home and you're tired. It's like, ‘that's easy’. That's good.”

Although Stacy loves dancing she makes a distinction between show business and art which to here are very different things. “If you want a dance number with three people wearing orange costumes to this piece of music. I might hate the music and hate the costumes, but I don't care I'll do it. Sure. I can make it happen. You know, it's just like decorating someone's house and they want polka dots and you like stripes.”

“There's very few times do you get to do something that is truly artistic. Working with Michael [Jackson] that was a dream job where you're working with the best of the best. But that's rare,” she says about her experience.

But when you never know where the next job and pay check will come from, she still loves each one of them. Stacy said that she will still “call my mom every time I get a job because I'm that thankful and excited.”

The most important skill for a dancer today Stacy says is communication. “I know a lot of things I'm not good at but I know one thing I'm very good at that is communicating and breaking down information so people can understand it.”

Stacy says “there's an art to communicating. I think knowing who you're speaking to makes all the difference.”

Throughout her career, Stacy has experienced the highs and lows of a performer. One of her biggest breaks was also one of her most difficult times.

“It was a Michael Jackson moment. It was on the ‘This Is It’ tour. We were one week away from leaving. I talked to my mom the night before she bought her ticket to go to London for opening night, the dancers were perfect,” she reflected solemnly.

“We just finished a full run through of the whole show and the costumes were fitted. I had everything on my list checked off and then he died,” she said with a great sense of loss. “Everything changed. The dancers had already gotten rid of their apartments. They're about to move to London for months. And then he dies, this is terrible.”

Stacy’s epiphany was that “I suddenly realized I'm not in charge. I always thought I was, I always thought you know, if you do ABC and D, then you get E. That was the most freeing moment of my life realizing that I'm not in charge.”

“You really have to enjoy the journey,” Stacy reflected, “and let go of the outcome because you're not in charge. You can do everything wrong and it turns out right. Or you can do everything right and it turns out wrong. I always had that pressure, now I just try to do good things.”