When Darrin Henson delivers the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at the Akron-Summit County Public Library at 2 p.m. Sunday, he will offer a unique perspective. Henson is the first speaker in the series born after King’s assassination in 1968.
“As Dr. King said, it’s time for a change,” he said in a recent telephone interview. But he hopes, like King, to inspire his audience.
“I’m going to be dealing with programs, thoughts, actions and results,” said Henson, an actor, writer and choreographer whose credits include the movie Stomp the Yard, the TV series Soul Food and videos for Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and ’N Sync. He also played Jim Brown in the football movie The Express.
“The system I believe in is, the way our mind is programmed is how we think, and how we think is how we act, and how we act becomes the result of our lives,” he said. “We’re going to see if we’re programmed well. If not, we’re going to go through a reprogram, and it’s going to be very interactive at some point. … I’m very interested in seeing what we’re really thinking, and where our subconscious is.”
He said most people want significance and certainty. “We want to know, if we’re part of something, that we make a difference. We want to know that we’re significant. That we matter in life. That our voices are being heard. We want to make sure that we’re going to eat. That when we leave the house, we’re going to return safely. … We have the need for certainty. We have the need to make sure that, when we say something, somebody will respond the way we want them to.”
But even when society seems to fill that need, it may not really be doing so. He said the Internet may offer an instant response to a comment, but that “is not completely realistic. … It’s an artificial intelligence. … We can not only double-task but triple-task, doing something while tweeting or Facebooking at the same time, which means we’re not really focused on the task at hand. We’re divided in so many ways.” And that division reduces a person’s overall power, he said.
Similarly, he is skeptical of the idea of balancing, say, work and philanthropy in life because there is more to life than maintaining balance. “I don’t look for balance in life,” he said. “And people raise an eyebrow when I say that. And I tell them, when we go to the park and get on a seesaw, how much fun is that seesaw if it’s balanced? Life is not supposed to be balanced. Life is supposed to be up and down. … Problems bring us growth. … Once we rise to those occasions, we experience growth.”
Henson looks at his own life as demonstrating the benefits of focus, starting when, as a youth in the Bronx, he saw the Jackson 5 doing Dancing Machine and later John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
“Dance was the second form of communication for me, the first being the English language, of course,” he said. “Dance is its own language, and its own form of communication, as well as an emotional release. … Watching the Jacksons perform that song, I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I just knew. And later on, Saturday Night Fever was another pivotal moment of ‘I want to do that.’
“I immediately started studying [dance],” he said, watching movies like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, West Side Story and The Wizard of Oz, and mimicking the moves he saw on-screen “until they were perfectly the same. … And then, subsequently, I would start putting my own dance steps in between.”
He was just 15 and in high school when he began choreographing dances, he said, looking for “any talent show that I could find, any contest that I came across from a flier or something I heard in the neighborhood.” He was discovered by Lionel C. Martin, a pioneering music-video director, and his career took off.
Henson recalled an interview not long ago when a reporter wanted to hear about hard times in his life and career, and Henson said, “I didn’t have any. …”
“When you decide to do something, and you stay focused on that end result, and just focus on it like a magnifying glass in the sun, holding a piece of paper, that concentrated effort will burn a hole in the paper,” he said “ … I was consistent with my focus and consistent with what I wanted. I simply wanted to be in show business, and I wanted to perform, and I took every opportunity to do that. …
“We forget the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King. He said you don’t have to see all the steps, just take one step at a time. And if you take one step at a time, and you keep walking strong and forward, you will reach the promised land, whatever that is for you.”
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.