In the jazz age, tap was queen to jazz`s king, and then the unique dance form quietly slipped away.
But it`s back now, in sizzling staccato style, the pounding rush of rhythmic feet-the energy and excitement of tap.
Tap dancing is big, as evidenced by the new movie ”Tap,” the Broadway show ”Black and Blue” and the rash of tap festivals around the nation.
”Tap” is the first non-documentary movie about tap dancing in decades. It stars Gregory Hines, tap`s most visible practitioner and booster, who also tapped in the 1985 movie ”White Nights” with ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov.
”Black and Blue,” a revue featuring tap dance, opened on Broadway in January with three singers and 24 dancers. Five are veteran hoofers, the eldest 79. There also is a trio of youngsters, including the wunderkind Savion Glover, who also co-stars in ”Tap.”
Good exercise, too
Last year tap festivals were held in Boulder, Colo., Boston and San Francisco, and more are scheduled for later this year in Portland, Ore., Houston and Washington. There`s also been a resurgence in tap-dance classes, which actively are competing with aerobics and dance-exercise classes for students.
In January, the Jazz Tap Ensemble performed Morton Gould`s ”Tap Dance Concerto” with the Minnesota Orchestra.
And if House Joint Resolution 662 passes, then May 25 will be National Tap Dance Day. It marks the anniversary of the 111th birthday of one of the greatest tappers of all time, Bill ”Bojangles” Robinson.
The Four Step Brothers were given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last July, and the Young Step Brothers from St. Louis did some flashy dancing to celebrate it. Honi Coles won the Capezio Dance Award in 1988, a first for a tapper.
Modernized tap
Sammy Davis Jr. and the 71-year-old Sandman Sims co-star in ”Tap” along with some other wonderful old-timers who recall vaudeville, the Cotton Club, 1940s Hollywood musicals and Broadway before ballet choreographers moved in and changed show dancing. But ”Tap” isn`t nostalgia. Its storyline promotes one of Hines` pet contentions, that tap dancing can be an exciting, up-to-date art form. He taps to the music-and city sounds-of today.
”I can`t fulfill all the work they give me. They all know me in Harlem. I can`t walk out on the street without somebody showing me a time step,” says Sims.
There`s a difference between tap dancers and hoofers, he said. The Copasetics-a slang word once used to mean A-OK-seen in ”The Cotton Club”
movie, were tappers, using heel and toe. Hoofers use the whole foot and take their sounds from what they hear around them, as Hines` character does in
”Tap.”
”I told Gregory, `At the end of this movie, people will know the truth,` ” Sims said.
He remembers growing up in the desert near the California-Mexico border and dancing on sand. When he went to New York he got a box and made his sound and reputation dancing in sand. It wasn`t salt, as some have said: ”Salt`s too sticky. You can`t get your feet to move in salt.”
When he was 14, he hungered to dance, but had no money and spent most of his time peeping in the windows of a Los Angeles tap school.
Tapping for freedom
”I got put in jail,” Sims said. ”I had to go to court to get loose. This is a true story. I told the judge I wasn`t loitering. I like to see how they dance because I try to be a buck dancer. He told them to clear the chairs and desks away and to let him see what I did. I danced a little bit and he said, `Case dismissed!` ”
Soon after, Sims moved to New York. ”If I saw a dancer, I`d challenge him. I didn`t care who it was. The way to get known in New York was to be the best. That`s what I strived to be. It has kept me going.”
Sims was part of the rhythm section of Lionel Hampton`s band for nearly 15 years, and he recently performed in 53 countries in 11 months for the State Department.
Harold Nicholas started as a child at the Cotton Club with his older brother, Fayard, who played hooky from school and learned steps from vaudeville. Harold is in ”Tap,” and proves he can still do a split. Fayard choreographed one number in ”Black and Blue.”
When the brothers appeared in Hollywood movies in the `40s, choreographer Nick Castle thought up ”mad tricks” for the pair to do, Harold said. Nick Castle Jr. wrote and directed ”Tap.”
Weathering the lulls
Most of the tappers had to take other jobs during the lean years, said Henry Le Tang, 73, who choreographed ”Tap” and most of ”Black and Blue.”
Honi Coles weathered those years working at the Apollo Theater. Harold Nicholas spent the `50s working in Europe. Le Tang, who always loved to teach, opened a tap school when he was 20.
”Tap was my love,” Le Tang said. When its popularity waned, he choreographed nightclub acts and, for seven years, TV`s ”The Gary Moore Show.”
Fifteen-year-old Savion Glover, a tap prodigy like Donald O`Connor and Mickey Rooney, absorbs every style of tap, Le Tang said.
”The older dancers call him `the little sponge,` ” he said. ”As he keeps getting more spectacular, his own style will start to come out. It is beginning to happen and will continue to happen.”
All the older tappers seem to have nicknames. ”I haven`t heard my real name in I don`t know when,” Sims said. Jimmy Slyde, who`s in both ”Tap” and ”Black and Blue,” specialized in sliding. Bunny Briggs, 66, with his saucer eyes and Bambi-like lashes, dances in both ”Tap” and ”Black and Blue.” He got his nickname from his grandmother because when she`d come home from work, Bunny would quickly scoot to get her slippers.
”I danced as soon as I was born,” he said. ”When I saw Bill Robinson dance, I knew I wanted to be a dancer. He sanctioned it.” Briggs tapped with big bands as a visual addition and an added rhythm instrument.
A centuries-old art
The earliest forms of tap dancing can be found centuries ago in parts of Africa and Ireland. It was further distilled in the United States by African slaves and the immigrants who brought their clog dancing with them to the new world.
Tap started its current escalation on Broadway in 1971, when ”No, No, Nanette” was revived. ”Eubie!” came to Broadway and Eubie Blake, whose music it comprised, wanted Gregory and Maurice Hines in it, recalling them from the act they had with their father called Hines, Hines and Dad. The brothers went on to do ”Duke Ellington`s Sophisticated Ladies.”
Alfonso Riberio originated the title role in ”The Tap Dance Kid,” and the names of tappers such as Hinton Battle and Gregg Burge got known around Broadway for that show and ”Sophisticated Ladies.” Lee Roy Reams brought Astaire-style tapping to ”42nd Street.” Honi Coles won a Tony as best supporting actor in a musical in ”My One and Only.” Patti LuPone taps today in the revival of ”Anything Goes.”
Upcoming are Broadway musicals in which Tommy Tune works with the Manhattan Rhythm Kings and one in which Gregory Hines plays, choreographs and dances as pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton.
Le Tang is confident that tap will resume its proper position in the arts.
In the meantime, the International Tap Association is underway in Boulder, giving the dance form an even greater credibility. A project of the Colorado Dance Festival, the association has started receiving inquiries from producers looking for tappers. –
