Janeen Damian, Writer and Producer, of 15 movies with the latest High Strung Free Dance, the sequel to High Strung, releasing later this year. At a young age, Janeen fell in love with dancing and went on to have an amazing professional dance career, where she performed with Cher, Lionel Richie, Prince, Elton John, George Michael and Engelbert Humperdinck, to name a few.

We discuss the life and passion of an artist and performer. Did Janeen ever think about the fact that her career as a dancer actually had a “shelf life?” Janeen says she didn’t want to go from a dancer to a choreographer which, typically, is the natural progression when dancers near the end of their dance career. She actually returned to her roots as a professional horseback rider where a casting company came to hire people for a commercial, met her, and so began her career behind the camera.

Janeen met her now husband Michael Damian, best known as Danny Romalotti, (Young and the Restless and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway) in Los Angeles and married 14 years later. While on their honeymoon in France, they took a leap of faith and began their new careers as creators and writers of a television pilot shot in Paris with Michael trying out his chops as a director. From that point on, they have never looked back and have worked together, side by side for the last 20 years.

We discuss being a woman in the male dominated film industry and how Janeen has gracefully dealt with all that came her way. Janeen and JoJami’s father, actor,James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard) taught both his daughters from an early age about the land mines of being a woman in the world of entertainment, which Janeen says helped her, “avoid getting into uncomfortable situations”, from the onset of her career.