Post by Bethany on Jun 23, 2016 13:16:42 GMT -5
Named after his great grandfather, Frederick, Freddie doesn't have too many nicknames that he goes by. He generally just goes by Freddie, but his friends have been known to call him Fredster, Fred and Phillips. His girlfriend calls him Freddie Teddy Bear, but he would never admit that to anybody.
He was born on the 30th May and he is 26 years old, although people tend to mistake him for being slightly older. This is due to his physical size and also the way he acts. he is very mature and has always older.
Freddie has been in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Lexi, since he was 20. The two met at an audition and both booked the job. They've been inseparable ever since. He was planning to propose, but he doesn't want it to put any kind of strain on their relationship. Lexi is his biggest inspiration in his life and he honestly doesn't know what he would do without her.
Freddie is an artistic director at Metric, but to put it in simple terms, he's the choreographer. His biggest annoyance is when people call him a 'dance teacher' or just a 'dancer' because that's not what he is. Sure, he can dance and at one point in his life, he was just a dancer. Sometimes the boundaries can get confused with people that aren't dancers or choreographers themselves. Obviously, Freddie has to teach the steps and the routine to the students, but this doesn't make him a dance teacher. He wants to create. He wants to make art. He wants other people to project his work, people that can dance a lot better than Freddie can. He is the man behind all of the training. He chooses the music, the costumes, the lighting, the props. Everything that you see on stage is what Freddie creates.
Freddie also acts as a counsellor at Metric, though this role is only tiny and he is just getting into it. He received the promotion a couple of months ago and he is still getting used to the new job role. The majority of students see other counsellors like Mr. Lambert. Freddie focuses on drugs counselling in particular, which is why his role is so small. In such a prestigious school/college, students are not particularly open to admitting they take illegal substances. He wants to make sure that if any students are being pressured into taking or trying drugs, he stops it. Or if they are already on drugs and they feel that they are too dependent on them, that he gets them the help they need.
He likes to think of himself as one of the cooler members of staff. He likes to have a friendship with his students, rather than the students feel like he is there purely for a paycheck because he definitely isn't. Of course, the pay is a benefit of his job, but he loves to inspire students and help with their growth and development. He has been known to hang out with the older college students from time to time, although he tries to not do things off campus with them, as it can get a little bit tricky with crossing the line between student and teacher.
It's kind of hard to miss Freddie around campus. He stands at 5'11" and he is pure muscle. He doesn't know how much he weighs because he really doesn't care. He doesn't even own any scales in his house. Freddie works hard to keep his body in the condition and the shape it is in. People often comment about how much Freddie actually eats, but he doesn't mind. He knows that you have to keep your body fuelled and ready to go, especially for the amount of exercise Freddie does on the daily. You can't drive a car without any petrol, and a body won't work how it is supposed to without the right food in there. Freddie teaches his choreography every day at Metric and it can be anything for up to 8 hours of teaching a day. But alongside this, he has to dance at home, too. He needs the time to dance and to create the pieces that he comes up with. This is where the majority of his exercise comes from and he knows that if he didn't do anything else on top of this, his body would still be in a pretty good shape. But he also attends the gym on an evening to lift weights. His dancing is his cardio, his strength comes from the gym.
Freddie's hair is constantly in dreadlocks. He hates taking them out but he does have them taken out and re-braided quite often, just because he hates it when they get too messy. His hair can tend to look slightly frizzy on top and just around the sides of his ears from the amount he sweats on the daily basis. He prefers to have his dreadlocks quite long - they usually go just below his shoulder blades. He also likes to dye one patch on the top of his head a different colour every so often. His go to colour is usually blue. He doesn't have a reason why he does it, he just likes to have a little something different about him.
He has his nose pierced, but he doesn't wear it all the time. He actually let his friend do it for him when he was around 15. It wasn't official or anything, they just sterilised a needle and shoved it through his nose. Not the most clever idea, especially when it got infected. But he liked it a lot and persevered with it. He has his right eyebrow pierced, but it's very rare he actually wears a bar in that one. He is hoping it will eventually close up. He also has his left nipple pierced, but that was done officially when he was 19. He also has quite a lot of tattoos, but again, most of them were done unofficially. He does sometimes regret getting them, but he knows that they make him who he is. When he looks back, they show what he has been through and all of the different places in his life. It makes him realise how much of a different person he is now and how much stronger he is, compared to who he used to be.
Freddie's style is pretty much always 'dressing for comfort'. 90% of his wardrobe is his 'dance clothes', which consist of joggers, hoodies, and tank tops, alongside at least 50 pairs of Nike trainers. He lives in tank tops, especially to teach in. He doesn't see the point in wearing something smart on his way to the studios, just to get changed when he is there. He encourages all of his students to wear casual and comfortable clothing so that they can give their best performances. Nothing annoys him more than students who are constantly having to pull their leggings back up or get rid of a wedgie. It distracts them from dancing properly. Freddie doesn't feel like he ever has to dress up, unless he is going out with Lexi or for an important occasion, because he is constantly working out and sweating.
Freddie lives for adventure. He is carefree and over the top enthusiastic about anything remotely adventurous. He loves the idea of being able to travel the world and learn from every country you visit. In the last year, he has been to Canada, Hawaii, London, Paris, and Italy. His dream destinations are India and Dubai and he definitely plans to visit them as soon as possible. He would hate to live his entire life in the same town, not learning or growing. There is so much in the world to see and he believes that everybody should get out there and see the amazing wide world out there.
Although he is carefree in his everyday life, his teaching methods are completely different. He often gets classed as the harsh teacher, the one who will have you run a dance over and over until he feels it is perfect. He will not settle for second best and doesn't want his students to settle for that, either. He doesn't class himself as harsh, he just see's it as realistic. If you want to work in the industry, you have to be able to cope with tough criticism. He knows that it makes his students work harder and achieve more. He doesn't want to set them up to think that the world is all rainbows and butterflies, because it absolutely is not. It's a tough place to be and you have to be ready for any kind of setback.
Freddie was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He had a pretty rubbish start in his life, although he doesn't really dwell on this. He was born to teen parents - his mom Laura was 14 and his dad Anthony was 19. There was trouble before he was even born, with his mom sleeping with quite a few different men at the same time. When Freddie was born, it finally helped reveal who his father was, due to him being black and there only being one black man in question, along with three white men. Freddie was looked after by his great grandparents from being three months old. His real parents weren't bad to Freddie, not by any means. But they just weren't ready to be parents yet. Laura was only 14 when she had him and she wasn't interested in being a mom. She was more than happy to sit around taking drugs and going to parties. His parents would fight with each other a lot, verbally as well as physically, and often it happened in front of Freddie. His great-grandparents Frederick and Eliza were absolutely smitten with Freddie. They spoiled him rotten and tried to give him all the love his parents couldn't give him. His biological parents did still see Freddie during the time he was with his grandparents, so he has always had them in his life. Just not as parents at the beginning. Freddie began dancing in his school, a hip-hop group that would teach classes on a Wednesday afternoon. He fell in love with it straight away, attending every session, begging his grandparents to find him a real studio that he could go to. He would watch all of the music videos, copying them over and over until he knew the entire routines.
When Freddie had turned 8, his great grandparents were involved in a car accident. Frederick died on the scene, but Eliza was taken into hospital in a coma. Although he wasn't really sure what a coma was at the time, Freddie would sit by her side and tell her all his stories about what had happened at school and what he'd eaten for dinner that day. He was returned to the care of his birth parents after the accident had happened, much to their dismay. Freddie had never 'officially' left the care of his biological parents, so social services had never intervened to check everything was okay. Eliza's coma lasted 4 months and when she did wake up, the first people she asked for were Freddie and Frederick. When she had found out Frederick had passed away in the accident, Eliza couldn't cope. She died in her sleep that evening and to this day, Freddie believes she had died of a broken heart. It was more likely that shock that killed her, but he prefers to think of it as the two not being able to live without each other.
His mom also found it difficult to cope with the loss of her grandparents. She started on drugs again, feeling like her life was spiralling out of control. Laura and Anthony both ended up addicted to heroin and cocaine, leaving Freddie to look after himself. By the time he was 12, his parents were constantly fighting with each other. Broken noses and bloody lips were the best things he could have hoped for, the minor injuries compared to some of the worse ones that happened. He hid away at free dance classes at the community church, where he met a bunch of other boys, all going through the same things he was. There were probably 15 of them altogether, the majority in their late teens and early twenties, just a couple of them who were around Freddie's age. They group acted like a support group, except they didn't speak about anything. They just danced. And they danced until they cried with anger and frustration at their families. And then do it again and again. The more days that passed with their families out of control, the more days they danced. And they just got better and better with practice. They spend a lot of time dancing on the streets to earn money, helping them get along with life each day.
Freddie moved out when he was 15, sleeping on the streets or crashing at his friend's houses when he could. Anywhere was better than being at home. He lived like this for a year, alternating between dancing, school and sleeping on the streets, until he was 16. That's when he was legally given the money his grandparents had left in their will. There was enough for him to live comfortably, paying rent and eating well for at least 6 years. He decided to house share to save him some money, whilst signing himself up at the nearest dance studio. He started to audition for commercials and got his first job just 4 months after starting at the studio. He realised this wasn't enough for him. Just doing the steps wasn't enough. He wanted to be out there, making the steps. He wanted to be the face behind the music videos, the one who put it all together. The one who created the magic.