Atypical Transit

Several years ago, a writer for ESPN dubbed that special place in the American pop culture landscape where seemingly anything can happen, “The Tyson Zone,” a reference to the unpredictable and unexplainable nature of the one and only Mike Tyson. The writer argued that if one could make up almost any story about a certain athlete, or more generally a famous person, and have it be believed by most audiences - “Athlete X owns 400 unicorns!” or “Celebrity Y carries uncooked ground beef wherever she goes!” - that person inhabits “The Tyson Zone.” For most of her life, Kimberly Dawn Neumann may just have been the Tyson Zone’s proudest citizen but now she’s moving on and moving out.

In her professional life, Neumann boasts an impressive hat collection: her first love is dancing and she’s been featured in Broadway and off-Broadway shows like Annie Get Your Gun and Finian’s Rainbow. But she’s also a respected journalist, offering dating and relationship advice through her “Dating Diva Daily” site and other sites, like Match.com, and racking up over sixteen million hits in the past two years. And she’s also a fitness instructor. And a fortune teller. And a model. And a trapeze artist. And, on one fateful occasion, a boxer.

Our interview begins with a joke about Richard Nixon’s infamous “lost” eighteen and a half minutes of audio tape, an odd start to be sure, but it’s here that we get our first - and definitely not our last - of Neumann’s expansive, infectious and totally uncontrived laughter, laughter that is at once full-blooded and effortless. Packed into a tiny frame, Neumann’s personality escapes from every pore. Now in her early forties... ish, Neumann was raised the daughter of an aerospace engineer and a teacher and attended the University of Maryland, where she studied journalism. What first appears to be a fairly typical upbringing, in fact sowed the seeds for Neumann’s future “atypical transit.”

“The discipline that I learned at a very early age [through dance] is why I think I’m able to succeed as a multi-freelancer. I learned how to manage my time as a very little girl.” When asked about her aspirations growing up, she quips, “my first dream when I was a little girl was to be a paleontologist, but that didn’t happen, but dancer and journalist did happen. I had my first journal at six-years-old and I still have it. ’Today, Shannon gave me twelve cents for no reason,’ was the first entry.”

Two knee surgeries, a broken hand and countless other confounding events have pushed and pulled and diverted and rerouted Neumann’s path but each setback has provided her with even more tools to do what she does best: communicate. The knee injuries and subsequent recoveries that temporarily robbed her of her ability to dance eventually yielded two books. “Dance was my soul and suddenly I didn’t have that outlet and my release had been taken away from me.” She also broke her hand delivering a (scripted) uppercut a little too close to her co-star’s jaw, causing her to miss opening night. “I clobbered the hell out of him. Took. Him. Down,” she states proudly.

In describing her recent change in approach, Neumann notes that “in the last few years, I’ve kind of reached my goals in a lot of places. I don’t feel the same overwhelming need to do another Broadway show.” She describes how, early in her career, that she was totally overwhelmed with emotion at the end of a show’s run. But now, when it’s finished, she’s done. “Great show, peace out.”

It’s also clear that she has been left jaded by the seemingly uncontrollable influx of reality TV stars into jobs traditionally filled by trained professionals like Neumann. Where Broadway’s great female roles were formerly played by the industry’s preeminent and most talented performers, now, those roles are increasingly and unsettlingly filled by ‘crossover stars,’ like Christie Brinkley. Neumann recalls Brinkley’s Roxie in Chicago as “the most tragic performance I’ve ever seen. She can’t sing, she can’t act, she can’t dance. I wanted to kill myself.”

So, what’s next? “I wish I’d been an Olympic gold medalist. Did I miss out on that?” Neumann asks with only a hint of sarcasm. Compared to most of us, she actually got pretty close. In the final minutes of our interview Neumann reveals that, as a dancer, she “was the first person to walk into the stadium [at the Opening Ceremonies for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta],” a moment that still moves her. “I have no idea how that happened.” Well, in a way, it happened because Neumann puts herself everywhere and throws herself into everything she does. “It never stops,” Neumann exclaims when describing the doubt and frustration she has felt throughout her life and career. And, even in this new phase of her life, neither does she.