I got better and better, and then one day I got a paid booking for a Saturday night. I taught math the first year at a catholic school in college as a substitute teacher. That didn't work out, but I'm very good at math. I thought I was going to be a math teacher. But thank god they let me dance and transition. But here in Chicago, they let me dance as a girl and let me take classes as a girl, and they wouldn’t let me do that at Juilliard. I had scholarships to Juilliard for dance, scholarships to Columbia. That’s how most everybody got a job there. My brother brought me to that area to see the show and then they would have guest nights on Sunday nights. That's where the gay scene, the bookstores, the hookers, prostitutes, the straight guys that pick up the girls and the gay boys were. It was all downtown Chicago, right off the river. Actually, in the 80s, it wasn't up North-there wasn’t no Boys Town, none of that. I didn‘t hang out on the North Side until I was 21. You could throw me in jail, but the next day, I’d come right back out! We've got to be ourselves.
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You can’t tell me how to live my life, you can’t tell me nothin’. As long as I ain’t breaking no rules or hurting nobody, you can’t tell me what to do. They can’t tell me what to do-we’ve always had that kind of mentality. We’ve just always been outgoing and we always surpass the police. Everybody says New York is the trendsetter, but I think Chicago is the trend setter for everything. I wasn't introduced to the gay scene until maybe two years into college. I was openly out as me, but I wasn’t out in high school or my first two years of college. I was fascinated with those shows, but they were too cliquish. There were a couple of gay bars right down the street from where I grew up, and they had shows. Then we were introduced to the gay bars like after I graduated high school. I was into theater and dance and acting all through high school and a little bit in grammar school. I was introduced to the Baton by my brother in ‘76. ZACKARY DRUCKER: When did you start at the Baton? Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Sheri’s resilience has lived up to her mother’s words: “Your community of girls are the strongest people on the planet because you have the courage to be who you are.
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Sheri’s talent jumps off the screen much in the same way it does when watching Houston, and her life parallels a similar trajectory to Houston’s-both having battled with substance abuse and been led astray by bad boys.
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Known for performing Whitney Houston hits for the duration of her years on stage, an archival YouTube video reveals Sheri commanding a brigade of back-up dancers in a Whitney Houston medley.