feet don't fail me now.

In the middle of her first ballet recital, three-year-old Minna Johnson silently walked off the stage and collapsed into her father's arms. Her parents took this to mean she'd been born with a nasty case of stage fright. Dinner table discussion would later reveal that that was not the case. The conversation went something like this: "Minna, what happened out there? Were you nervous?" "I wasn't nervous. I was tired and I don't like the other girls." Surprisingly, she did go back to ballet and somehow managed to swallow her toddler distaste for the other tiny dancers. Five years later, she discovered singing. Her parents enrolled her in a theatrical workshop for kids under ten. The Johnsons did not want to force their daughter to do anything she wasn't fond of. They wanted to make sure that she tried as much as she could (and she'd already rejected sports) and had a lot of territory to explore in the search for her niche. Some combination of singing and dancing seemed to do the trick. During the finished product of the childhood workshop, she donned a colossal star costume and belted out the national anthem - which had nothing to do with the plot, she'd just demanded that they pay their respects to the country. To this day, no one really knows what that was all about. Ballet and various choirs (from school to community) carried her into adolescence.

Passion for the dance never trumped school and her strong will combined with performance (both in things academic and recreational) and innate desire to get out of Chicago landed her at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. One might find it surprising to learn that she was pursuing her BFA in dance. Singing and acting were not a part of her collegiate life, just her personal one. When she was not working to pay off pesky student loans, Minna could be found moonlighting as a nightclub singer in many a New York City dive bar. It was not glamorous but in the end, it paid off. She had often turned down her older brother's offers to help. However, one Saturday evening when Minna was feeling particularly down on herself and her luck - an extremely intoxicated man had actually gotten to his feet and started to vomit during one of her performances, she could only hope that it was the whiskey and not her tunes - she invited her brother up to watch her sing. Enthralled with his sister's ability, he insisted that she let him get her in touch with someone he knew from RCA. This was her golden ticket, it just took a few years to cash.

Following what seemed to be the family's new footsteps, she dropped out of college to pursue her musical career. In 2007, she released her self-titled debut album. Both Minna and the label were unsatisfied with her overall record sales. After being released from her contract with the label, she tried a different angle She auditioned for her first film. It was a horror movie that, for the most part, stayed under the radar. Shortly after the movie, she returned to New York and played a bit part on the show Gossip Girl.

After the show (in the style of a Hollywood flip-flopper) she gave music another shot. January of 2009 brought a new year and a new label. Her sophomore album was released the following year to mixed reviews and significantly lower sales numbers than the first. Throwing in the towel was contemplated, big dreams and a lot of stubbornness fought the idea away. Months later - to the dismay of her Jewish mother - she released a Christmas album. In June of the next year, she switched labels (yet again). It was for much more positive reasons than her first change, though. She had successfully auditioned and obtained a co-starring role on the show Smash - a drama about two women vying for the same part in a musical about Marilyn Monroe. The NBC show was coordinating with Columbia Records to release music from the show, hence her label switch up. In the last year she has starred in her second film New Years Eve, in which she showcased both her acting skills and talent for singing and geared up for the premiere of her new show. Thankfully, she gets along with most of her co-stars and with any luck, there won't be a repeat of that first ballet recital.