In a turn of events quite pleasantly to the contrast of my experience with Carole Pope, I was afforded the blessing of meeting Ms. Tré Armstrong of CTV’s So You Think You Can Dance Canada this afternoon. I am just going to state it outright: this woman is nothing short of a treasure.

Let me be the first to admit that I already had a crush on Ms. Armstrong, having developed something of an addiction to crack TV dance competitions over the last few years. Tré glides across that stage with all of the sensuality of the seven veils personified, and when she sees something she likes, she makes all kinds of noises that are nearly unfit for prime time. Oh, my heart.

So I was prepared to like her before she arrived. The fact that Mikey calls her one of his best friends was another vote in her favour. But after the whole Pope experience, I was more reserved in my approach when she arrived. I needn’t have been.

She was immediately friendly, thanking me and everyone at the station for having her, treating our Little Queer Station That Could as she would the biggest ticket media outlet in town. She invited me to join the interview, and I was so happy to accept!

The interview was great. It was more like having drinks with friends than hosting an interview, partly because Tré and Mike already had such a great rapport, but also because she is just so cool. Like, a really cool person, like the person you met at that party the night before where you really didn’t know anyone but you were glad she was there because wasn’t she really down-to-earth? That kind of cool.

We hit it off right away. She is working on a fantastic project called A New Daei, helping young women and queer youth in Parkdale, where she grew up, to connect with the dance industry. She’s very involved in opening up the dance world to underprivileged voices, and she is very passionate about breaking barriers that hold people back from the entertainment industry.

Here’s the interview audio.

In short, she’s awesome.

Off-air, we talked about the specific barriers that queer-identified dancers face in a homophobic dance world. And when I thanked her for being so outspoken in favour of breaking down that homophobia, she totally touched my hand.

Yes, I am twelve years old. I totally swooned. I think I am still swooning.