How Did You Get Into Tap Dancing?

1) Around the Corner

Tricky to explain how kids encounter dance teachers in the first place. My mother claims that dance classes for me never crossed her mind, until one day, a 3-year-old Pam marched over to her and said, “I want to dance.” However, at that age, parents have to find a studio, pay for lessons, get the child dressed and out of the house, so it is a family investment by default. 

My first dance studio was picked for its convenience. In 1983, Northeast Dance Academy was located five blocks away from our house, in a little shopping center at Rhawn Street and Dungan Road. The shopping center is still there; the dance studio long gone. It now houses a nail salon.

I remember the sounds of getting there: leaves on the sidewalk to crunch and kick. I remember objects: a tall, steep staircase to a basement studio and a long hallway, a cold, gray metal barre on a dark wood-paneled wall, a slim teacher with a maroon maxi ballet skirt. I remember what I wore: a pink ribbon on my left ankle to distinguish my two feet. I remember performing. One of my tap routines to “Put on a Happy Face” involved a pink paper plate prop with a face drawn on it. I remember exactly how we had to sing, hold the prop in front of our faces and then slide it off the floor to continue our routine. I remember the costumes. An enterprising dance teacher ordered us “2-in-1” tutus. For ballet, they looked like regular tutus; for tap, they transformed into tulle bustles.

There are a lot of blanks. My mother recounts that she can still picture my excitement: skipping and running down the block to get to the studio. And, that during recitals, I was the only one who ever knew the routines from start to finish, although I am chalking that one up to reporting bias. At that age, the dance teachers hide in the wings.

My next dance studio was not near my house - in fact, my mother and I had to take two buses to get there - but that distance was a by-product of graduating from a “studio-for-convenience” to a “studio-for-real.” After decades of teaching and having owned a dance studio myself, I see the shift happen around age seven, which is when it happened for me, too. It is the point at which kids grow out of the ‘baby classes,’ and (kids/parents) either quit or (parents) decide to keep going. 

My first studio-for-real was Miss Joan’s School of Dance at Cottman and Revere Streets in Mayfair. I had been a student at Northeast Dance Academy for three years, and I showed ability in dance. The turning point for my mother was a school talent show in which myself, and then two kids my age, both performed tap dance routines. My mother was so impressed by the other two kids’ performance, (not so much me, I guess), that she hunted down one of the mothers for information about this other dance studio that produced tiny, well-timed dancers. My parents might have been conservative about this hobby of mine, but as children of immigrants, they demanded superior excellence in literally everything my brother and I did. So, if I was going to dance, and they were going to pay money for it, then they were going to find the teacher who would make me work the hardest at it. 

In the summer of 1986, I took my first private placement class with Miss Joan at her one room studio. It was a gray, low-ceilinged space with a linoleum floor turned black from tap dust. The waiting area was no more than four folding chairs next to the dance floor, just separated by a half-wall that you could step over. Miss Joan’s office, where she corralled parents for weekly tuition payments, was just an alcove off the waiting area, where she also kept huge piles of papers and costumes. There was also a small room at the end of the dance floor, covered by a red curtain, where we would pretend to be ‘offstage,’ and Miss Joan kept her hundreds of vinyl records and acrobatic mats. All of the classes - tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, acrobatics, pointe and “toe tap” -  were taught by Miss Joan. 

Upon entering her studio, you could not avoid noticing the glossy color photo of a beaming Miss Joan in a white fringe dress and a man in a bell-bottomed suit, posed in a promotional ballroom dance hold, because it was tacked front and center on her bulletin board. You would expect that such a photo would invite questions, but if a curious child did ask about the man holding Miss Joan in a dip, her response was closed. He had died in a motorcycle accident. They had been engaged. From that point on, every time you walked into the studio, the photo felt like a mousetrap that was about to go off. You knew not to ask about it again. 

Similarly, her teaching style was terse. Miss Joan taught by her own graded system, similar to a pass/fail format. After completing my placement class, according to her evaluation, I was nowhere near ready to dance with the other kids my age. So, for an entire summer, I sweated buckets in her stuffy, windowless studio through private lessons and group classes, until I learned the technique I needed even to join her studio. I wanted to do well, and I was so afraid of Miss Joan, that I practiced everywhere. I have a memory of doing shuffle-hop-digs in my tiny concrete backyard, over and over, until a neighbor came out and said, “they look good to me!”

When September came, I was ready to join the seven year old class.

Compared to today’s standards for primary tap dance in your average dance studio, the level of technique Miss Joan demanded from my age group was advanced. We learned and memorized entire routines, at least three minutes in length, in various tempos and time signatures. For example, one of my first routines was a 3/4 waltz time version of “It’s a Most Unusual Day,” and we had to execute waltz clog progressions with at least fifteen different breaks. 

We learned formations, arm choreography and how to perform. I remember drilling tap dance entrances - a flap, flap, flap-ball-change, starting from the ‘backstage’ to the center mark - over and over again. Don’t forget, there were those classic “1980s” arms: held out to ones’ sides, bent elbows, flexed wrists.  By the age of eight, I was time-stepping while perched on a 2 foot by 2 foot wooden suitcase prop, that I had to carry, swing around, set down on a certain count, and then also, not fall off while doing my Buffalos. This is why, when my mother saw the kids at the talent show, she was dumbfounded by what they could do. I stepped into that same line. 

How we teach tap dance to young kids now has not changed in theory - it is still quite step-focused - but what has fallen to the wayside is accountability for improvement. That means: once a child learns a step, then that child should be able to demonstrate it alone. Their tone should be clear and their timing precise. Then, that child needs to be able to build upon their technique through consistent practicing at home and regular class two or three times a week. No magic bullet, no shortcut. Rigid, yes. Intense, definitely. But Miss Joan’s system worked. Anyone under her watchful eye and ear improved. Her mission consisted entirely of producing very fast, very clean tap dancers, and her way of fast-tracking improvement was by breeding competition. Maybe that’s why all I can remember about her is how she taught technique, which was by telling you what you were not doing “right.” 

2) Broad Street and Olde City

In 1990, I was ten years old, and a couple of the kids from my Police Athletic League talent troupe started to attend a popular children’s jazz class at Joanne's Dance Studio, which was then located in South Philadelphia at the intersection of Broad and Porter, above Bambi Cleaners. Since those parents spoke so highly of the teacher, I found myself at Joanne’s Dance Studio, too. Unusual for the time, this class was not your typical enrollment-based class that would end in a recital. It was an opportunity for children to train at a high level and possibly be invited to perform in a Philadelphia youth dance ensemble called the Next Generation Dance Theater. Also unusual: Joanne wasn't the teacher of this class - it was a man by the name of Stephan Love. 

Stephan was the first real Artist I ever encountered. In contrast to Miss Joan’s superintendent approach to dance, when Stephan entered a room, everything about it changed. His mood on any particular day was thrown at you like a fastball, and you better catch it. As such, he trained you to anticipate his class. You stretched beforehand, you sprayed your hair back, and you were waiting by the door ten minutes before it started. You wanted to be great, and you wanted to do your best, because hewanted you to be great. I learned this first, most important lesson about how to teach kids, by being his student.

A dancer, a teacher, a choreographer, a visionary, an inspirer, he was a real force in the Philadelphia dance scene in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, he didn’t operate out of one physical space, but it didn’t seem to matter. He had a movement and a following and many people with studios who believed in him. His jazz class was offered at Joanne’s, and his organized tap class happened there, too, and an ensemble ballet class was offered by Alicia Craig at the Philadelphia Civic Ballet. 

At ten years old, gawky and lacking technique, I was hardly considered close to being a member of Stephan’s youth company. These kids in Stephan's class were simply amazing; possessing poise, personality, the cool dance clothes I pined for and extensions for days! I was younger than most of them by about 5 years, and with my combination of glasses, braces and frizzy hair, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Somehow, though, maybe because I showed promise or maybe because I just kept showing up, I ended up training with that group of kids from Spring of 1990 to December of 1991. I also studied with the other teachers that Stephan brought into his fold, which included modern dance superstar Bernard Gaddis, the legendary Maurice Hines, and in tap, the best of everything: Leon Evans and Delphine Mantz. 

In early 1991, Stephan opened his own studio space called the Next Step. It was located in a storefront on 2nd St nearest the intersection of Arch. The building is still there, and if you walk by today, it is hard to fathom how it was ever turned into a dance studio. It is a fairly tight, narrow, one room space, with a foyer and because of its tiny size, a downstairs area for waiting. Stephan also lived in the downstairs area.

It was pre-gentrified Olde City! (The “e” still existed back then). It was live there, it was hip, it was underground, it had an energy about it, and it was not the affluent enclave it is now. Artists are really good at finding those affordable nooks and crannies to make their work happen. Because, it has to happen. Once Stephan opened his school, I was there every Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm. Most of the kids at his studio danced all day long, no questions asked. 

When I entered into this orbit of people at the age of ten, I was the youngest one, and again, behind. Even so, nobody babied me. My early teachers were similar in that they did not hide the reality of hard work from you, even when you were young. It is within these environments that you see how far you have to go, and it gives you a sense of the magnitude of the goal. Stephan, and everyone he brought into his studio, were very clear about teaching us how hard the journey would be. Dance is a lifestyle. It's all-consuming. It's addictive. It decides why you do the things that you do during the day. It's personal and complicated and sometimes you hate it. It's punishing, difficult, and disappointing. Sometimes you love it. It's the medium for how you express who you are. It's nothing if not dramatic. 

To that point, a tenet of dance instruction that has also fallen by the wayside in today’s web of ‘adjudicated’ competitions and pay-to-play opportunities is that performing was a privilege.

Let me say that again. Performing a teacher’s work on stage is a privilege bestowed upon the student. It is not an entitled reward for coming to class. It’s not a guaranteed thing, even if you practice, know the dance, and come to every rehearsal. Athletes know this. They can come to all of the practices and still “ride the bench,” as my ex-football playing husband says.

Case in point: in the summer of 1991, Leon Evans was teaching the teens a tap routine to Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation," which they went on to perform at the Apollo Theater Amateur Night. The steps and the style were all very new to me, but I tuned my ears and got the routine. I was always so determined. I may have done the routine one hundred times one day, sweating through my shirt, hoping for a chance to be recognized.

Those times in the studio remain one of my favorite childhood dance memories. I am pretty sure my feet nowhere near matched my determination, but Leon allowed me to tap dance with the teenagers and get the same kind of corrections they were getting. But, while I might have learned the routine and been able to execute it right along with them, I didn't go to the Apollo, because I was not invited. And, it probably would have been years before I was allowed that kind of opportunity. It was an honor JUST to learn the dance. It was an honor just to be invited into the studio to learn. 

People remind me, “Pam, that was a long time ago,” and yes, I know, society and the pace of achievement has changed such that it seems everything anyone does from birth forward needs to have an associated high ROI percentage for the time and money spent.

What needs to be said much more often in dance pedagogy is:

The rewards in dance rarely happen on stage. Sometimes, they do. But I will say, I have done hundreds and hundreds of shows in my life to this point, and what do I remember, 30 years later? Being in that hot classroom in the dead of July 1991, the way my brain had to work so hard to keep up, the thrill of moving to music, the joy of getting a really hard step after hours of practice. That’s all, right there.

3) Baltimore

Encounters with great people often lead to more encounters of similar magnitude. In the summer of 1991, I was eleven years old, and Maurice Hines came to Stephan’s studio for a master class, because he was hooked in with Mr. Leon and Miss Delphine for his show, “Uptown: It’s Hot!” It was a highly anticipated event, and the studio was packed with people, mostly teens and adults. Space was super tight, and true to my form, I did not dare to take a spot in the front, so I tried to keep up, from my spot way in the back. Maurice gave out a quick jazz combination,  boom-boom-boom, and then expected us to do it right away in small groups. My permed and hair-sprayed bangs were sweat-plastered to my forehead. 

I had learned something from Mr. Stephan and everyone in Next Generation: if you don’t know the combination, or you screw up even one step in it, then keep doing it in every group until you get it. So, that’s what I did. If there were five groups that day, I was dancing in every one of them, (in the back line). All of a sudden, I hear this booming voice from Mr. Hines. 

"Baltimore!" 

(Important note for this scene: I'm wearing a pink t-shirt from a trip my family took to Baltimore).

He says it again. 

“Baltimore!” 

Is he talking to me?

Like a scene out of my own personal horror movie for the avoidant pre-teen, time slows down, everyone turns around, looks me up and down, and then looks back at Maurice Hines, in dead silence. No longer a shadow, I touch the hem of my shirt and consider how I might take it off casually and not be “Baltimore” anymore, although my awkward self did nothing casually. 

He says it again:

"Baltimore! Come up here."

With my stomach hitting the floor and humiliated tears filling my eyes, I moved towards the front. But then, as I approach him, he pulls me into a side hug. What?

"Baltimore, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

I am speechless. 

Maurice Hines, always the performer, saves my line.

"Well, let me tell you.” 

“You're either going to be a dancer or the President of the United States, with that kind of determination! Keep going."

Everyone had a good laugh, he pats me on the back, and I run to the back of the room, in shock.

Whew. He didn't talk about my shirt. The moment was over.

Did that just happen? He thinks I could be the President? 

I encountered Maurice Hines a few times after that. One time, I got up the courage to recount the story to him, in the thirty seconds of face time I could grab, and while he didn't remember me, he did light up when I told him the story. He remembered it as something he might have said to an eager, graceless child, who had so much passion spilling out of her tiny body, that I could be anything I wanted to be...even a tap dancer. 

4) 15th and Sansom

At some point, a child’s “studio-for-real” often multiplies into a few studios for specialized training. I spent a lot of time on SEPTA as a kid, traveling from Olde City to Mayfair to downtown Center City. It was a lot of fun. I felt very much at home, traveling from place to place, peering intently out of bus windows.

In Fall of 1990, after Miss Joan’s studio had closed, I was taking jazz at ‘Joanne’s School of Dance’ with Mr. Stephan, and I was also permitted to take drop-in adult jazz with Megan Doyle at the Jazz Center, even though I was only ten years old. I just gamely joined in with dancers twice or three times my age; it didn’t even phase me.

I also took tap with Delphine Mantz at the University of the Arts’ deep downstairs basement room in 309 South Broad, but when it came to ballet...Well, let’s just say I certainly did not lack in the determination department, but I was born with no turnout, inflexible joints, awkward long arms and torso, and a pathetic inability to balance myself. 

So, when Mr. Stephan kindly said to my mother, “she needs more ballet,” we ended up on two more buses and the El for me to attend the Philadelphia Civic Ballet from 1990-1993, which was owned then by Alicia Craig and her daughter, Carla. Alicia’s co-founder and husband, Norman, had passed on prior to my joining the studio.

Back then, the studio was located on the second, maybe third?, floor of a classic, Philadelphia-style rust brick building, in between 15th and 16th Streets on Sansom. While that part of Center City is glitzy now, in the early 1990s, Sansom Street was gritty, full of trash and shuttered storefronts. Every time I hear the words from A Chorus Line’s “At the Ballet”: Up a steep and very narrow stairway...it could have been written exactly with that studio in mind. It was a ways up. As you climbed the stairs, you’d hear the ballet music getting closer and closer, the sharp corrections from the teacher, the creak of the well-traveled boards near the top, and something would happen to a young dancer’s brain, where they’d leave the real world and enter the world of dance.

My first placement class at the Civic Ballet was a disaster. It was akin to one of those nightmares when you show up for a final exam, an hour late, no pencil or pen and worse, everyone is staring at you while you take the test.

I did not know any of the ballet terms called out, any of the exercises, and any of the foot or arm positions. Mr. Stephan was certainly being nice when he said “more” ballet was what I needed. I needed, first of all, a ballet dictionary. I had taken weekly ballet classes at Miss Joan’s studio, but she just didn’t focus as much attention on it as she did on tap class, and of course, my parents trusted her and/or did not know the difference. Frankly, Ms. Joan’s ballet instruction was probably perfectly average and would have been adequate for any other child who was not as determined as I was. I just was moving into circles where it was no longer good enough.

However, one thing I had learned to do quite well at Miss Joan’s was to pick up steps quickly. In my nightmarish moment, even at that young age, I look back with surprise that I didn’t crumble or crack. I mimicked, kept up, and fell into line. These are all dance skills that are sometimes just as important as technique.

I suppose I showed promise in the “fake it ‘til you make it” department, because in November of 1991, Miss Alicia invited me to perform a ballet solo as “Pinocchio” during a Philadelphia Civic Ballet company performance at the Free Library of Philadelphia on the Parkway. This was one of my happiest childhood dance memories.

If I had to sum up Stephan’s approach to teaching as intense, Miss Alicia’s teaching approach was intentional. Before speaking, she chose her words meticulously, and she dispensed wisdom in carefully crafted sentences, weighty with meaning. Children would have heard her words on one level, not fully understanding what she was saying between the lines, and I believe that was the point. The lesson was meant to be unpacked over years and years of study, trial and error. This kind of communication style might not have been as impactful if she hadn’t been a statuesque, stunning woman, always dressed to the nines in elegantly tailored clothes. Not unlike some of my later teachers, she inspired children immediately through her first impression.

In the spring of 1991, during our recital dress rehearsal, my ballet group was on the stage at Albert Greenfield Elementary, and we were really screwing up the choreography and formations. We fooled around, ran in circles, holding in our laughter, until we saw Miss Alicia walking down the aisle towards us. Unbeknownst to us, she had been watching in silence from the back of the auditorium. In no rush whatsoever, she clicked her way to the stage in glossy pumps that were just a shade darker than her nylons. Despite it being June, she was resplendent in a navy blue, long-sleeved skirt suit with a Mandarin collar, a long string of pearls, and a floral silk scarf at her neck. 

We knew we were in for it. All we could do now was take our silence.

Drawing a breath, she said, eyes piercing all of us: 

“If you want to be a dancer, then: you need to learn how to be a Smart. Dancer.”

Now that she had our attention and the auditorium’s dead silence, she continued to expound:

“Being smart means you need to know where to go at all times!

You need to know exactly where your spot is!

You need to be aware of who is around you!

You need to make sure you are where you need to be!”

“Act smart!” 

She knew she didn’t have to say more. She wordlessly showed us a movement example. One of the parts in the dance that we had been missing involved us ballet-running in a circle and landing in a diagonal line, in first arabesque, evenly spaced. She made us rehearse the part several times. Even when we probably did it correctly, she found another small detail to fix.

And then, in silence, we were dismissed.  

Reader, are you still turning over that phrase: “smart dancer?” Truly, so am I. I consider how a child might understand the word “smart,” perhaps simply, as “not intelligent.” However, I believe she knew that there would be children in that recital who might still be turning over that phrase throughout their lives. Children who might grow up to be dancers and dance teachers themselves. That those children would remember her speech word-for-word and make use of them one day. So that, instead of missing a beat or a spot in line, those children would know what to do when:

the people you work with take your ideas and make them their own.

the people in your field fix the landscape, either with money or connections, allowing them an advantage.

the people you trusted sabotage you and your work, either to get ahead or bring you down with them.

These children survive the arts by being smart. By acting smart. By finding a place in the line and knowing the music enough to land on the beat.

Whatever those words mean to you. 

5) Mayfair

In January of 1992, I was twelve years old and back to not having a regular dance teacher of any kind, again. The Next Step had closed at the end of 1991, and the Philadelphia Civic Ballet, after moving to the top floor of the Episcopal Church at 21st and Sansom was about to close, too. I was unusual and lucky to have done a lot of dancing and performing up to this point, but I was still young, painfully shy, desperate to twirl constantly like I had at the Next Step. I needed another “studio-for-real.” 

By March of 1992, and I have to guess it was through recommendations, I ended up at my first placement class at the Rita Rue School of Dance on Frankford Avenue, nearest the intersection of Longshore. Hers was the smallest (as in square footage) studio I had been to thus far. Upon entering, there was a maybe three feet of waiting room space, (importantly, no chairs available for parents), a desk and then, the long rectangular dance floor, also linoleum and gray-black from tap dust. The far side of the room had a tiny alcove for dance bags, one bathroom, and a screen door to the outside. That screen door was our only source of air in the hot months. The lack of chairs is an important element in this scene. You might think it is the dance instruction and the choreography that is the art and craft of our business, but the primary thing you have to master is how to teach the parents boundaries, rules and respect, so that you can even do your work. 

I do not remember that first encounter, because it all happened so fast. I assume that I showed Miss Rita what I knew, and it was OK, because by June of 1992, I had my own group costume, a new pair of tan high-heeled tap shoes, and I was performing in Miss Rita’s “senior line” at the recital. (If you are not familiar with how dancing schools work, that costume-ordering maneuver would have been unheard of). I was 12 years old, and Miss Rita was my primary tap teacher for the next five years. She was of an indeterminable age because she was so trim, sharp and quick. Her class uniform usually consisted of suntan “Hold and Stretch” tights, tap shorts and heeled tap or jazz shoes. Her makeup - stage ready, immaculate. Her hair - teased, sprayed, in a white-blond French twist. As I got older, I adopted the French twist for class, too. 

With the exception of Miss Rita, I had this tendency to treat my dance teachers like gods. I imagined they occupied a seat high above me, and I observed them from far below: a humble and willing acolyte. Class time was worship time. I wordlessly executed the steps they barked at me, and they let me know if my offering was sufficient by either correcting me or ignoring me. When I left their class, an imaginary curtain dropped between me and them; so much so that if I had encountered any of my teachers outside in ‘real life,’ I would have ducked for cover to avoid seeing them. 

In comparison, when I entered into Miss Rita’s world, something about how she considered me and spoke to me made me feel like we were allies, or co-conspirators, or even friends. It is not a coincidence that her sixth sense ability to become exactly the person I needed allowed me to grow into a confident, sassy teenage dancer, one that would have been unrecognizable even a year prior.

I had always been able to do steps; now, under her direction, I was learning how to dance them, or as she would often say, “Put Something Into It.” I came to adore performing and all of the nuances and tricks that come along with knowing how to get an audience to love you. She gave me that gift. I loved dancing on stage. It was all I wanted to do, forever. 

I am not alone in the universe of people who were impacted by Miss Rita’s special and proprietary blend of teaching magic. On Facebook, there is a group called “I Was A Rita Rue Dancer,” where folks even older than me talk about her ability to teach crystal-clean tap technique while also dispensing a wizardly combination of stage-ready poise, sophistication, wit, and aplomb to all of her kids. There was also something about her specific style that carried with her dancers, long after they left her studio. If I didn’t know how to walk into a room under Mr. Stephan’s direction, I certainly learned how to do that under Miss Rita. I now occupied a place in the front line, center.

On Thanksgiving weekend in 1994, myself and the other girls in my senior line were waiting nervously together at THE only place to be on Thanksgiving weekend those days - no, not Black Friday shopping - it was the Performing Arts Alliance dance competition in King of Prussia. Without taking an entirely different book to write about the changes in competitions “then” and now,” just take everything about what you see on Dance Moms and think the opposite. Tl;dr: real tap judges, actual tap categories, only three winners per category, one level. Oh, also: this was the only competition like it in the area, so every studio worked toward it all year, and every studio attended, claws out.

Our group routine that year was quite unusual in that we weren’t using our usual upbeat show tune. She made our routine to a jazz drum track that was on the end of one of her vinyl records. That year, in our teen large group tap category, there were dozens and dozens of entries - at least 30. We huddled together and watched each group perform to loud, wild screaming and applause. Remember, three winners.

Miss Rita said one thing to us before we went on. 

“Go Out There and Kill.” 

And we did. First place.

6) Back to Broad Street

So, here I am, French-twisting my hair, legs for days, kick-lining in my heels, living in my Northeast Philadelphia bubble, when 1995 hits, Savion Glover crashes into everyones’ brains and his new show, Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, became the ‘thing in the air’ that everyone could not stop talking about. We did not have the Internet at my house until the year 2000, so my entire understanding of what was happening beyond Philadelphia in tap dance came mostly from a monthly print copy of Dance Magazine - - which rarely covered tap, you are right. But in 1995, nobody could ignore writing about this show. I saw photos of the cast members in articles, clips of the show on TV, and then the actual show twice, in New York, in 1996. I was beyond ignorant of tap dance history then to understand what was being conveyed in the story. When the Bill “Bojangles” Robinson character came out with the Shirley Temple doll strapped to his feet, I did not know enough to flinch, nor did I even know who the Nicholas Brothers were or why their depiction in that show was so problematic. But frankly, all I could see was the dancing, which was so complex, loud, fast, and full of steps I had never seen before. What was this? 

Obviously, it was tap dancing, but of a lineage and level of musical understanding that Miss Rita did not know enough about to teach. Years before, I was exposed to some jazz tap by Leon Evans and Delphine Mantz, but I didn’t have the know-how to grasp the musical concepts. Just by virtue of where she was from and who her teachers were, Miss Rita’s style was influenced by the dancing she saw in movie musicals -- which I also devoured as my primary way of actually seeing tap dance and tap dancers, but I did not know, until many years later, these dancers been influenced and taught by uncredited black tap dancers. 

It was my own ignorance, too, that blinded me from the realization that my primary tap dance teachers had been white women and what that implied for my training. Dance studios in Northeast Philadelphia of my era taught “Broadway tap.” Tap steps are pretty cut-and-dried, in that there are not hundreds of defined ones, (ie. shuffle, flap, brush, Maxi Ford). You can learn the entire atlas of tap step names in just a few classes. The liminality between Broadway tap and jazz tap is in the understanding and connection of the music in relation to the dance and, therefore, in one’s proficiency to improvise. Miss Rita certainly scatted everything and counted beat subdivisions. She made us feel everything in the music and know the phrasing inside and out. We danced to jazz drum tracks, for goodness sake. But, her preference and choice was that the steps came first, followed by precise formations, arms and stage presence. 

I think we make mistakes when we try to define the styles qualitatively, because to me, Broadway tap is a historical reflection and the by-product of what happened when the showgirls and male dancers in the movie musicals went on to open dance studios all across America. They codified a way of teaching tap steps to young people, because steps were the way to measure improvement. Improvement is what parents want to see and pay for. Enter Al Gilbert: he proceeded to serve a hole in the market for a plug-and-play tap syllabus that thousands, maybe millions, of dance studio kids heard in their ears growing up. Other tap technicians, like the genius Stan Kahn, created their own graded way of teaching technique. Technique is absolutely important and your calling card. You really cannot do anything in tap without having the technique. My point is, how you enter into the dance is just the first lens through which you enter your place in history. Eventually, if you have the itch to learn more, you look for better glasses.

My fifteen-year-old response to seeing Noise/Funk was, I wanted to learn “harder” steps like the ones I had seen in the show. Dutifully, my mother called somewhere or somebody, and in the summer of 1995, I found myself in the University of the Arts evening extension class, taught by LaVaughn Robinson. LaVaughn also taught for the two-week summer World of Dance program. Over the period of two years, I took every class he taught. This was long before UArts had the fancy buildings with air-conditioning, and because of the heat, they suggested you only take four 90-minute classes a day. I didn't do that, because LaVaughn's adult classes were in the late afternoon and evening. I took 6 classes a day: two in the morning, two in the afternoon and two tap classes in the evenings.

Ironically, I did not get the “harder” steps I wanted in LaVaughn’s classes. Pretty much every class I took with him, we did the same eight-bar phrase over and over. (Side note: I learned his definition of a bar: four beats). Rarely, if there were just a few of us in class, and he knew we had spent weeks doing that same eight bars, he would add, maybe, four bars more. To my teenage mind, doing the same phrase dozens of times was "easy." Oh, how I had zero concept of the education in timing, phrasing, accents and groove that LaVaughn was dishing out in front of me. Twenty plus years later, I will teach that same LaVaughn phrase to a class, and I can still find another new detail or nuance to it that I have never found before. That is true musical mastery - when your material is so rich that you can play it hundreds of times and still find something new. 

Most of the young people I was dancing with at Summer World of Dance were nowhere near the level of tap dance-diehard that I was, so the classes were pretty empty. (Not much has changed, haha). And still, LaVaughn taught that same "easy" eight-bar phrase, which I repeated back, "perfectly." To me, that's all tap dancing was - the perfect execution of steps. What else was there? I did not know yet. One memory that I still return to, time and again, was LaVaughn, listening to his class practice his music, taking a beat, and then laughing to himself while telling us, "it's more than a notion." If I had to have one sentence inscribed on my tombstone about tap dancing, it would be: "it's not about steps."

7) Center City

On June 1, 1996, my mom and I were downtown. Sixteen, a dancing queen, I was training often, and Saturdays meant that I was taking my Saturday afternoon adult modern jazz class with Roni Koresh. (In his first studio, on the second floor of the corner building at 20th and Chestnut). After the class was over, I recall Roni saying to all of us, "come over to our show at the Drake." I wanted to be one of the cool kids, so I begged my mom to stay a little bit later in town, and my mom agreed to it, likely because the showcase was free.

It was a gorgeous, mild, early summer day - one of those rare days in the city when it is not too hot or crowded, when everyone is out shopping and staying on the streets a little longer than they had planned, and I could not get enough of this vibe. In 1996, the Drake was still a low-rent apartment building, and the black box theater could still be rented by anyone. It felt like a place where things happened. My eyes were glued to the stage.

At that showcase, I received my first introduction to post-modern dance and that was wild. I remember Karen Bamonte and Melanie Stewart on the bill. There was an early iteration of the Koresh Dance Company. I also saw two performances that literally crashed into my skull and transformed my mind about what dance could be. 

I saw Rennie Harris leading one of his first crews in "Students of the Asphalt Jungle" and "Endangered Species." All these years later, I can still recall how I felt, watching these super-human creatures demolish the stage, and how my heart burst out my chest as I first encountered dance as story-telling. I had never seen a dance piece lit or staged or constructed in that way before. It opened up a door in my mind to seeing choreography as: something that could touch people; a medium for making people feel all of the same things I felt when I heard music; a tool for me to use all of the details and pictures and colors and sounds and ideas I had long collected in my own head. 

I also saw Robert F. Burden, Jr. perform for the first time, leading Tap Team Two and Company through a set that included Robert singing, shouting, and leaping about ten feet in the air at various intervals....basically being Robert. I remember looking at my mom and saying "I want to do that." Little did I know the connection that Robert had an inextricable link to LaVaughn already, and that I would be doing a lot of that, less than two months later.

My mom actually encountered Robert first, without realizing it, on her way to and from work. He would busk for crowds at the Clothespin. After that dance showcase, in the summer of 1996, Robert also took over the evening UArts extension classes for LaVaughn. It is kind of funny how, when you look back, that you see how there are no coincidences in life. 

Tap dancing outside is great publicity, because Robert's night classes in 1996 were consistently packed. It was late summer of 1996, when Robert called me over after his class and asked me to come to a rehearsal for his company, Tap Team Two. At that time, Robert was rehearsing in South Jersey, but he could have asked me to travel to Newfoundland: I would have been there. One of my most favorite dance memories is riding home on the El that night, with my mom, and I was squirming in my seat, I was so excited and overwhelmed with pure glee. This invitation to tap dance was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me.

I remember a Saturday in my senior year of high school, when, from morning until night, I literally danced and traveled all over Philadelphia with Robert F. Burden, Jr.. I can’t even tell you what we were doing. I remember a class, a rehearsal, some sort of movie shoot for a friend of his, hanging out on the boards. When I finally walked through the front door in the evening, disheveled, with my falling apart dance bag, my mother looked at me and said, "my daughter, the Gypsy." A little off in the political correctness - it’s a generational thing. Yes: I was learning how to be a tap dancing traveler, a seeker, an absorber of the culture, meeting those people by default who had this new information I craved.

So many of our early performances were outside, amongst crowds, busking while people walked by, that I learned a lot about improvising and dancing in the moment. It was a crash course in straight-up, classic, Philadelphia street hoofing. You got to have something to say, because it's just you and the board holding someone's attention. You had to keep up your end of the conversation. Nowhere to hide. The sound was also very, very different than what I had previously thought of as “tap.” 

There was a year of overlap where I was finishing my senior year of high school with Miss Rita and Mr. Robert as my teachers, and there could not have been a wilder difference between their personas and approach to the dance. I had a foot in each world, but the one that called to me like a Siren song was this new one, where I changed my shoes from heels to flats and every time I entered the room, I had no idea what we were going to do. We did not practice flap heels, or go across the floor, or perfect our cramp roll turns. No - in Robert’s rehearsals, we improvised. Our improvisations were woven into the ‘etudes’ created by LaVaughn Robinson, (by that point, I had learned more than the eight bars from class). I learned what a tap jam was. I heard new names of legendary tap dancers, and in some cases, I met them in person!

Robert had this unique way of changing a performance on a dime, be it the tempo, the actual order of what we had carefully planned to do, or even your practiced part. If you weren't keeping an eye on him, you would be sorry. If you were not minding the groove, you would be even more sorry. For someone like me who had always done exactly as I was told and performed the same steps every time, it felt like diving off the deep end and remembering mid-dive that you did not know how to swim. Yet, I never found it terrifying, because I realized that there weren't any mistakes, if you just kept going and kept riding the wave of energy. Listen for a while and find the groove when you're ready. Or pick up your feet and keep moving, there was always a way back in. I was forever hooked. And I felt like I was starting from the beginning.