Ajacian’s Acting Career Has Taken off in Past Year
By Mike Ruta
DurhamRegion.com
Everything Nikki Grant touches seems to turn
to gold for her.
The 21-year-old Ajax dancer and actor says she “begged” her parents as a 10 year old to let her try dancing. After just one year at her studio, she made the competitive dance team. Eight years later Grant auditioned to become a member of the Toronto Raptors Dance Pak and for two seasons, 2007/2008 and 2008/2009, was its youngest member. She was accepted back for a third season but turned the job down as, after less than a year of taking acting lessons and acting, she landed a major role in a feature film.
Grant admits she got into acting to become famous. And while that may happen in the future, she’s had a change of heart.
“It’s definitely for the love of the art because if you don’t have that it’s hard to succeed in this business,” she says.
The aforementioned film is Beat the World, due for release in March. Grant plays Cherry, a dancer who she says doesn’t have a lot of self-esteem and uses arrogance to hide the fact. She was in Berlin this past summer where some of it was shot.
“It’s about three dance crews from across the world that are battling to get to Beat the World, this dance competition,” she says, noting Cherry is “basically the bad girl” who has designs on one of the male dancers, who has a girlfriend.
Just as she was finishing up her work on Beat the World, Grant found herself on another set, dancing in Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, released in September on the Family Channel and starring the Jonas Brothers. She followed that up with an appearance in an episode of a new TV series, Lost Girl.
If all of this seems like a natural progression, it was: Grant says she got into dancing because a few friends danced. And while she was a member of the Dance Pak, she learned a lot of the other dancers acted as well and she decided to give it a shot.
As you might have guessed, Grant’s extremely outgoing and loves performing in front of a crowd. So, when it came time to be in front of the camera, nerves were not an issue.
“It was so exciting to me,” she says. “It is as if the camera wasn’t there and I was another person.”
She likes acting because it allows her to explore different aspects of her personality.
Grant says the support of her parents is what has carried her though all the rapid changes she’s had in her life in the past few years.
It’s no surprise that the former Ajax High School student has her sights set on her next challenge.
“My next big goal for myself is I’d like to be a series regular on a TV show,” Grant says.
