Jayden Perkins had everything that makes a good dancer: pointed toes, straight legs, powerful arms. But his friend and fellow dancer Nathaniel Vodak said it was the work ethic of 11-year-old Jayden that anchored his technique.
“He tried at everything that he did,” said Nathaniel, 12. “If there was something troublesome to him, he kept working on it.”
Now, those who loved Jayden are grappling with his sudden loss. On Wednesday morning, Jayden died in his Edgewater home in a knife attack that also left his pregnant mom, 33, in critical condition with multiple stab wounds.
An autopsy conducted Thursday by the Cook County medical examiner’s office, which identified him as Jaydone Perkins, found that he died of a stab wound to the chest.
Chicago police arrested a suspect Wednesday and said the attack appeared to be domestic. Jayden’s mom was in stable condition as of Thursday night, friends said.
Rattled neighbors — some of whom heard the attack — described the family as calm, loving, polite and respectful. They said the violence was devastating in their ordinarily quiet and safe apartment complex.
Nathaniel said he last saw his friend, who went by Jayden, on Tuesday in dance class, where they were the only two boys in their 16-person dance troupe.
Tuesday’s class had been hip-hop, one of Jayden’s preferred genres, and a special class on leaps and turns. The boys also took classes in ballet, tap, contemporary and jazz dance, he said.
The two had known each other for some time — Nathaniel said he remembered first meeting Jayden in a dressing room about two years ago — but grew closer when Jayden joined the company and began practicing four days a week with the rest of the dance group.
Nathaniel said he and Jayden were good confidantes for one another.
“We could tell each other anything that happened at our schools because we were at different schools, drama or anything,” he said. “He was a good secret keeper, and really kind.”
Nathaniel’s mother, Armensue Vodak, described Jayden as an upbeat, poised child with an expansive vocabulary.
“He was a well-loved child,” she said. “Always happy, always smiling.”
Nathaniel and Jayden spent the weekend before his death at a dance competition in Rosemont with the rest of their company, where both boys were recognized for their performances.
In a video capturing the contemporary dance that earned their company a second-place finish in their category, Jayden and Nathaniel can be seen standing tall facing each other while the rest of the group lies on the floor.
When the music begins, they walk toward each other, cross paths and pirouette in unison before they collapse downward, explode back up and start to dance alongside the other company members, by then rising off the floor.
When the boys weren’t onstage, they were playing hide-and-seek in the hotel, taking selfies and delighting in easy access to Starbucks specialty drinks, Nathaniel said.
Jayden especially liked Frappuccinos from the coffee chain, his friend said. And he liked turning during his dance choreography: He could do three pirouettes in a row reliably, Nathaniel said, “and randomly, he could land four sometimes.”
Jayden was less enthusiastic about tap and ballet, which Nathaniel said were newer dance genres to him, and people who didn’t try as hard as he did in class got on his nerves “because they’d give us a bad reputation.”
The boys also shared a passion for musical theater. Both played Jojo in different productions of the musical “Seussical,” Nathaniel said, and Jayden was cast as Nemo in Peirce School of International Studies’ production of “Finding Nemo,” where he was in sixth grade.
“He told me he had just auditioned to have fun with it and got (the lead),” Nathaniel said. “I think it was a talent that he didn’t know he had. He can’t perform it, though.”
The show has not yet opened.