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Watch a young Leon Bridges dance to a song featuring Patrick Watson

In a flash back to 2013, watch Leon Bridges dance to Patrick Watson and The Cinematic Orchestra's "To Build a Home." The piece, choreographed by his college dance teacher, is about "his journey from shy young man to a confident, strong man."

Flash back to the soul singer's dancing days with this YouTube gem

Leah Collins · CBC Arts ·
Before he became famous for his music, Leon Bridges was an aspiring dancer, and one of his routines was set to the music of Montreal's Patrick Watson. (Bridges: Sony Music Canada; Watson: Clyde Henry Productions)

Earlier this week, soul singer Leon Bridges spoke with CBC Arts about his love of dance, and while we shared plenty of video performances in that story, we left something out —  footage of Bridges himself.

Before he was crooning like the second coming of Sam Cooke, the 26-year-old Texan was studying dance at Tarrant County College in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. He was better known as Todd then, and while putting together our story on the musician's dancing days, we stumbled across this piece — posted to YouTube by his former instructor, Gypsy Ingram.

Recorded in 2013, Ingram choreographed the piece for Bridges, who dances to "To Build a Home," a Cinematic Orchestra song featuring Montreal's own Patrick Watson on vocals.

As Ingram told CBC Arts: "The dance and the song were a dialogue about his journey from shy young man to a confident, strong man whose voice and dance reflected the place he was staking out for himself in the world. Even then I knew he would be special!"

Bridges himself told us how dancing awakened his inner performer. "It definitely gave me confidence," he said. "Before I started dancing the only other time I'd been on stage was when I did a talent show in high school and I was scared to death to get on stage. ... I was a really shy kid, so with dance I was able to get out of that, and be confident on stage."

Watch Leon Bridges dance to "To Build a Home."

Check out CBC Music's story about Bridges' new mixtape released today, go to q to see Bridges perform songs from his acclaimed album Coming Home, and read more about his dance influences on CBC Arts.