Here is the full text of the Parade article on Charlotte d'Amboise by Michael Fleming.
"In my family, if you were going to be a dancer, you couldn't be a mediocre dancer." says Charlotte d'Amboise. "The burden always came in dance class. I would never sign my name. I didn't want anyone watching me, thinking, "that's Jacques' daughter. She had better be great."
When your father is ballet legend Jacques d'Amboise, not being great is an understandable fear. Charlotte grew up traveling the world to watch her distinguished dad perform in such revered settings as the Parthenon in Greece. At her childhood home near Manhattan's Lincoln Center, her father regularly entertained big stars like renowned opera singers and international ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolph Nureyev.
"As a kid, I'd watch my dad and say to myself, "I want to dance like that," Charlotte recalls. Famous for his elegant leaps, Jacques d'Amboise soared in ballets choreographed specifically for him. "The men jumped and turned and did all the fun stuff. I wanted to dance like that, to have that power. I could care less about the women --all they did were pirouettes."
Though her mother, Carolyn George, was also a ballet dancer and had trained with Manhattan's School of American Ballet, Charlotte, who studied there from 8 to 14, found the prospect less attractive. Her older brother Christopher later followed his parents into the New York City Ballet. "I never felt pressure to go into the ballet," she says. "My parents didn't do that to us. But I do remember thinking I was the one who wasn't succeeding."
Charlotte discovered an alternative at age 16. She went to a performance of Dancin', a Broadway musical by Bob Fosse, the famed choreographer known for slinky dance numbers showcasing women. "It was life-changing to think that someone could be interested in me as a strong, sexy woman and not as some little ballerina," she says. "It was also more powerful that you could sing and act.
"So, I made a deal witht my parents. I said, 'Give me a year to get a Broadway show, and if I don't, I'll go to college. I really wanted them to believe in me and to believe I was good. I needed their approval."
In 1983, at 18, d'Amboise joined the cast of 'Cats' for a year long engagegment. "Nothing has ever felt more amazing to me than that phone call telling me I got the part," she says.
"That was the happiest moment in my whole life." Though she jokes about being so excited, "to play a cat, for God's sake,"
the part allowed her to emerge from her father's shadow. "Once I was on Broadway, that burden didn't matter. My dad wasn't in this world. This was separate -- my own thing."
D'Amboise has since been in more than a dozen shows and next month will star in the Broadway return of 'A Chorus Line' (now playing in San Francisco), about a group of dancers desperate to make the cast of a musical. She says it captures the thrill of live acting and the gypsy nature of a dancer's existence.
"This is the only profession where performers put themselves on the line every single day," she explains. "By the end of every performance, you're sweaty and exhausted. But you go home and you feel good about it. It's like every molecule in your body has been put on the line, every part of you has been tested."
These days, Charlotte, now 42, also is trying to pass the rigorous test of balancing work and family. She and husband Terence Mann, a Broadway actor, are raising two little girls in their Harlem brownstone -- 3 year old Shelby and Josephine, 4, who was adopted from China just before Shelby's birth.
"Once I walk through the door, I try to be with my kids and really give them my concentration," she says. "For the longest time, I was scared to have kids. I remembered how my dad was always worried about his body -- how he'd get injured and then couldn't deal with us kids.
My whole life is consumed with trying to get through a show," she says. "But I made the choice that when I'm home, I'm with the girls until they go to sleep. Then I can ice my leg. My mind is clear on what's more important now."
"Noel [Coward] and I were in Paris once. Adjoining rooms, of course. One night, I felt mischievous, so I knocked on Noel's door, and he asked, 'Who is it?' I lowered my voice and said 'Hotel detective. Have you got a gentleman in your room?' He answered, 'Just a minute, I'll ask him.'" (Beatrice Lillie)
My parents know me so well 
