About the Tap Preservation Award
The annual Tap Preservation Award is given to an outstanding individual or organization in the field for the superior advancement of tap dance through presentation and preservation.
Biographies
2001 - Marda Kirn is the founding director of EcoArts Connections (EAC), a producing, presenting, consulting, and service organization that brings visual, performing, and other arts together with science, social justice, and other fields to inspire sustainable living while finding new roles for the arts in the face of global change.
Previously, Kirn was the founding director of the Colorado Dance Festival, considered one of the top three dance festivals in the US during her 14-year tenure (1982–96), known nationally for innovation and quality programming. She was also a founder of the International Tap Association and served as its executive director for five years before founding EAC.
Kirn has received numerous awards, among them the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts; Western Alliance of Arts Administrators Distinguished Service Award; Colorado Dance Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award; Carson-Brierly Dance Library Legends of Dance in Colorado Award; and NYC Tap City Tap Preservation Award. More recently she was awarded the first University of Colorado Creative Climate Communication Prize and was among the five first Dairy Arts Center Honors awardees. Kirn has written for national publications including the Dance/USA Journal, Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, Dance Magazine, the National Endowment for the Arts web site, Denver Post, Daily Camera, Colorado Daily, and Westword.
Kirn has lectured on dance/the arts for many organizations; has served on grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Western States Arts Federation, among many others; and has been a speaker/panelist and/or consultant for organizations in the US, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. She has spoken at numerous conferences about the benefits of arts, science, and sustainability collaborations, among them: American Alliance of Museums; American Association for Performing Arts Presenters; American Solar Energy Society; Dance/USA; Theatre Communications Group; the UCAR 50th Anniversary Forum; Behavior, Energy, and Climate Conference; Conference on Communication and Environment; Geological Society of America; and the Ecoarts Australis conference in Wollongong NSW, Australia; and upcoming in 2016 at COP22 in Marrakech and the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
At the University of Colorado Kirn has given talks for and/or collaborated with the CU Art Museum; Museum of Natural History; Department of Theatre & Dance; Program in Environmental Design; School of Journalism; Entrepreneurship Center for Music; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Environmental Studies; and Religious Studies. She is on the Advisory Boards of the Albert A. Bartlett Science Communication Center and the Community Engagement, Design, and Research Center (CEDaR), and on the Steering Committee of Growing Up Boulder.
2001 - New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day is a program of Flo-Bert. Ltd., a not-for-profit organization. Flo-Bert’s fiscal sponsor is the New York Foundation for the Arts. The New York Committee has for the past 15 years led the celebration of National Tap Dance Day in New York. National Tap Dance Day was designated by an Act of Congress in 1989 to “honor tap dance... an original, unique American art form — a national treasure.” It falls on May 25th, the birthday of the great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878 - 1949).
Delilah Jackson is the creator and founder of Flo-Bert Ltd. which combines the names of famous 1920's Broadway performers, Florence Mills and Bert Williams. The Flo-Bert name symbolizes life achievement awards. The Tap Extravaganza® show, where the awards are given, is produced by the Committee, as a Flo-Bert program. The Committee has produced the annual Tap Dance Day events since 1990; Ms. Jackson's Black Patti Project produced the 1989 show. The Committee’s Tap Extravaganza® attracts audiences from across the country and around the world to pay tribute to great tap masters through the thrill of live performance. In March 2002, it co-produced its third show with Town Hall, 21Below; The Best Tap Dancers Aged 21 and Below.
2002 - Sali Ann Kriegsman, writer and adviser, served as president of the Dance Heritage Coalition, the national alliance of leading dance archives and libraries; executive director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; director of the Dance Program of the NEA; dance consultant to the Smithsonian Institution and executive editor at the American Film Institute. She has published a book, and her articles and essays have appeared in magazines, newspapers, journals, and reference books. She wrote SAVION GLOVER – IN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE for PBS, and was associate producer of a biographical essay on Charles ‘Honi’ Coles for the MACNEIL-LEHRER NEWS HOUR. She is a recipient of the Flo-Bert Award (1997), Oklahoma City University’s Heritage Preservation Award (1999), and a Distinguished Service Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
2003 - Madeleine Nichols is curator of the Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, a position she has held since 1988. She is also an attorney, and is active in professional organizations in both the library and law fields. She presently serves on the Editorial Board of the Society for Dance History Scholars, the board of directors of the National Museum of Dance, and the National Advisory Board of the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has served as Chair of the Arts Section for the Association of College and Research Libraries of the American Library Association, member of the Dance Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts and member of the National Leadership Group for the UCLA Dance/Media Project. Ms. Nichols is a founding member of the Dance Heritage Coalition, dedicated to the development and exchange of information and materials related to the history, documentation, and preservation of dance. She has curated exhibitions on Bronislava Nijinska, American Ballet Theatre, George Balanchine, and Isamu Noguchi, among others.2004 - Jane Goldberg is a “rara avis”: a dancer who is also a writer. She has been one of the most prolific voices in the field of tap dancing for the past four decades. In 1972, after graduating as a political science major from Boston University, she saw the dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and was soon studying tap dancing. She began ferreting out many of the remaining entertainment greats of the 20th century. She became good friends with the late Gregory Hines, the actor/singer/tap dancer, as well as his chronicler. This was a totally unique period of tap history where some of its originators and veterans in their 60s, 70s and 80s had not been documented and Goldberg started with small grants for her “By Word of Foot” festivals and performances throughout the United States and Europe to preserve their work, reconstruct their original routines and catch them on video before they died shortly after.By the 1980s, Goldberg had apprenticed herself to many of these old hoofers, while at the same time, interviewing and documenting their work on audio as well as video. These classic jazz dancers were at the time living virtually “underground,” considered practitioners of a “dying,” or at best, “lost” art form. At least, that was the official lore Goldberg heard about this uniquely American art.Tap’s universal appeal attracted Japanese scholars, doctors, lawyers and “closet hoofers” to Goldberg’s underground quarters on Bleecker Street. She employed her newly developed “talking feet,” to pass down great steps and well-kept recipes from the originators.As artistic director of Changing Times Tap Dance Company Inc., a non-profit preservation, promotion, and performing entity, begun in 1979, Goldberg began teaching at New York University for twenty years. She also brought tap for the first time to Jacob’s Pillow and the American Dance Festival, where tap hadn’t been seen in 37 and 18 years, respectively. Her company produced the first international festival, By Word of Foot in 1980, at the renowned NYC Village Gate. Her acclaimed memoir, “Shoot Me While I’m Happy: Memories from the Tap Goddess of The Lower East Side” with introduction by Gregory Hines, comes with a bonus DVD which highlights this celebration of teaching.Her archives now reside at The New York Public Library’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; its full name is “Jane Goldberg’s Wandering Shoes, Tap (h) istory, Tip Top Tapes, Tapalogues, Tapology and Tapperabilia” is living testament to the future of tap. It is also listed under Changing Times Tap.Known as “the hoofer with angst”, Goldberg has performed her comedy/tap act, Rhythm & Schmooze, “topical tap with running commentary over the feet,” in countless jazz, contemporary, and experimental venues throughout The United States, such as The Village Vanguard in NYC, The Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and Harvard University in Boston. She is the recipient of two Fulbright Scholarships to India where she performed her highly idiosyncratic program throughout the subcontinent.
2005 - Delilah Jackson, cultural historian and founder and artistic director of the Black Patti Research Foundation (named after Sisseretta Jones who organized the most prestigious group of touring black troubadours at the turn of the century), has amassed one of the most extensive collections of African American expressive culture in recent time-- more than 1000 rare slides, photos, and vintage films documenting the performances of musicians, singers, actors and dancers of Harlem during he 1920s and 1930s when New York City was the entertainment center of the world. Though conscientious collecting, Jackson has made sure that these artists are not forgotten. She worked as a consultant such films as The Cotton Club, the BBC production of Going Back to Harlem, and Essence Magazine’s Women in Jazz. And has lectured at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, Museum of Natural History, Schomburg Center for Black Culture, and Smithsonian Institution, and is the recipient of the Mama Lu Parks Achievement Award for Dance History and the 2001 Flo-Bert Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York City Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day. In 1997 she curate a show at the Smithsonian entitled “Paris, the Jazz Age” (1914-40).She is a lifetime member of the Negro Actor’s Guild and the New Amsterdam Music Association, founded by James Reese Europe, and in 1993 was inducted into the Black Collector’s Hall of Fame. Since the early 80’s, she has worked with producer Cobi Narita co-producing numerous tap concerts at Cobi's Place. Last year, she took part in “The Eagle Flies On Friday”, a program celebrating the centennial of Harlem’s NAMA (New Amsterdam Musical Association), one of the worlds’ oldest jazz clubs. She will also be part of a documentary on the organization currently being filmed. She has celebrated Tap Dance for over 25 years, presenting Dr. Buster Brown, Charles "Cookie" Cook, Lon Chaney, Chuck Green, Henry Le Tang, Jr., Tina Pratt, Mable Lee, Salt and Pepper, and The Cotton Club Girls, etc. in various shows during Harlem Week. We are proud to honor Delilah Jackson with the American Tap Dance Foundation’s 2005 Tap Preservation Award at the New York City Tap Festival.
2006 - Rusty Frank is a Tap Dancer and Lindy Hopper, producer, choreographer, writer, and dance preservationist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book TAP! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories 1900-1955, the producer and choreographer of the stage revues "Swingin' The Century - The Big Band Show" and "Jazz Tap." Rusty is the producer of the one-hour television special in production, "TAP! Tempo of America" (recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant). Rusty has been a professional dancer since her college days, and has performed throughout the world and locally at such locales as The Hollywood Bowl, Disneyland, and the Derby. She is part of the Smithsonian Institute's Jazz Oral History project, a contributing author in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Dance, the Danish National Encyclopedia, Jazz: The First Century, and The American National Biography. Rusty has appeared in many dance documentaries, including the BBC's "Fascinating Rhythms - The Story of Tap," and Bravo's "This Joint Is Jumpin'." Her associated choreographies to "Jeep Jockey Jump" and "Shout and Feel It"* have entered the into the staples of swing dancer routines throughout the world along with the Shim Sham, The Lindy Chorus, and The California Routine. Since 1998, Rusty's "Lindy By The Sea" dance school (El Segundo, California) offers group and private classes in Swing Dance, Lindy Hop, Balboa, Collegiate Shag, and Charleston. Rusty began her dancing career at the tender age of six, when she saw her first Shirley Temple movie ("I wanna do that!"). She started with tap dancing, studying with many of the great tap masters, including her mentor, Louis DaPron, as well as Fayard Nicholas, Brenda Bufalino, Steve Condos, Gene Nelson, Miriam Nelson, LaVaughn Robinson, Bob Scheerer, Lou Wills, Jr., Leonard Reed, Dorothy Toy, Katherine Hopkins Nicholas, and Jon Zerby. She has tap danced professionally over the years with The San Francisco Tap Troupe, Six Feet (Wayne Doba, Rodney Price), Pedal Extremities (Walter Freeman, Mark Mendonca, Michael Rainey), Tapology (Patti Meagher), The Rhythm Rascals (Walter Freeman), Mulligan and Whitmore "Tops in Taps" (Chester Whitmore), and The Rhythm Pals (Alfred Desio). In 1989, 1990, and 1991, Rusty produced, directed, and appeared in the sellout all-star tap revue "Jazz Tap"! featuring the Nicholas Brothers, Savion Glover, Jeni LeGon, Arthur Duncan, and Brenda Bufalino. Rusty had featured roles in many musical theatre productions, including "42nd Street," "Babes In Arms," "Dames at Sea," and "Stepping Out." In 1996, Rusty added another great American dance to her repertoire -- Lindy Hop, also known as Jitterbug or Swing Dance when she saw The Jiving Lindy Hoppers ("I wanna do that!"). She moved to the United Kingdom for two years and partnered with world-renowned English Lindy Hopper Simon Selmon, together making numerous television, movie, radio, festival, and special event appearances. Rusty returned to the United States in 1998, making her home in Southern California. She teamed up with Peter Flahiff, in the act "SWING SHIFT" from 1998-2002. They taught extensively throughout Southern California, including every Wednesday at The Rhythm Club (since 2001), and were guest teachers at The Satin Ballroom, and the world- famous Derby, in Hollywood, California. In 2000, Rusty, together with composer, arranger, band leader Bill Elliott, produced the stage musical revue "Swingin' The Century - The Big Band Show" featuring the Bill Elliott Swing Orchestra and Rusty's performance team "The Jitterbugs". In 2003, Rusty welcomed her new "Rhythm Pals", Ron Campbell and Giovanni Quintero, to the Lindy By The Sea teaching team. In the world of Lindy Hop, Rusty counts amongst her teachers and inspirations: Jean Veloz, Ralph Phelps, Irene Thomas, Jewell McGowen, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Louise Thwaite, The Rhythm Hot Shots, Betty Wood, and Barbara Rice and Sam Militello. In 2003, Rusty teamed up with tap dancer Gregory Gast, and together they have performed at the Derby, the Los Angeles Jazz Sweet and Hot Festival, and at Rusty's own Rhythm Club. Rusty is a highly sought after teacher of Tap, Lindy Hop, Baloba, Collegiate Shag, and Charleston at international dance camps, including the Herrang Dance Camp, Sweden; Boogie Baren's, Germany; Perth Hullabaloo, Australia, Dance Explosion, Norway; Russia's first Lindy Hop Festival, London Lindy Hop Festival, England; Mainz Dance Camp, Germany; International Tap Dance Camp, Finland; Tappin', in Scotland & Norway, and Belgium; and nationally at Swing Camp Catalina, California; Harvest Moon Swing Out, California; Flying Home; Washington, DC; Detroit Tap Festival; and the St. Louis Tap Festival. Her choreography credits include productions on stage, film, and niteclubs. She choreographed swing dance sequences for the Fox television show "Quintuplets"'s episode "Swing Swing Swing." Rusty is on the Board of Directors for The Profesional Dance Society (PDS) and a retired Board member of the Academy of Dance on Film.
2007 - Susan Goldbetter is the founder, producer, and Executive Director of Circuit Productions, Inc. (CPI), a not for profit arts organization created in 1986 with the mission to inspire, entertain, and educate underserved audiences in the New York Metropolitan area through performances, public classes, workshops, and arts education programs; featuring senior artists who are living legends of the City’s rich legacy of tap, jazz and world and ethnic music, as well as emerging talent in these fields.Susan was a protégé of tap legend Charles “Cookie” Cook. After seeing him and the Copasetics in 1979 at a once-in-a-lifetime performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music she was a tap devotee. From 1980 to Cook’s death in 1991 she was his tap student, archivist, historian, manager and producer. Together, they produced a unique series of lecture performances entitled “Evenings With Charles Cook and Friends,” which featured legendary dancers, singers and entertainers from Harlem’s golden age, some of whom had not performed since the 1930's and 40's. Susan has performed at the Smithsonian Institute, Lincoln Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem and Aaron Davis Hall. She co-produced a series of the “Friends” highlighting the work of James “Buster” Brown, Harriet “Quicksand” Browne, Ernest “Brownie” Brown, Marion Coles, Leon Collins, Tina Pratt, Mable Lee and Chuck Green. Susan presented a series of tap and jazz ‘salons’ she created with Cookie bringing aboard vocalists, vaudevillians and jazz musicians Al Hibbler, Rose Chi Chi Murphy, Leeta Harris Nelson and younger artists including Mickey Davidson, Hank Smith, Heather Cornell and Lynn Cataldo.As a video producer Susan worked with director Skip Blumberg on the award winning PBS Television video short, “Essentials of Tap Technique,” which featured Cookie, Brenda Bufalino and Kevin Ramsey. She produced, archived and donated all of Cook’s tap video performances – including the video documentary “Cookie’s Scrapbook” to the Dance Collection at Lincoln Center and the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture. She was the curator of the multi-media exhibition “Cookie’s Harlem: A Tap Dancer’s World” which was shown at the Museum of the City of New York in 1995, reaching over 100,000 new and seasoned tap fans. With over 30 years experience as an arts educator Susan holds an MA in Television Production, was an Adj. Associate Professor of Speech/Theatre at CUNY, LaGuardia Community College for 23 years, and has developed pilot dance and music education programs with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, CUNY/LAG, Long Island University, the New York City Department of Education and the Brooklyn, Queens and New York Public Libraries. Susan continues to advocate for the accomplishments of senior artists and was delighted when City Lore’s 2004 “People’s Hall of Fame” award went to Tina Pratt and the Swinging Seniors. In 2005 Susan received a grant for Tina Pratt and jazz pianist, Sarah McLawler through the International Tap Association and the Network of Cultural Centers of Color. Through this unique collaboration, Circuit Productions received a Ford Foundation/Doris Duke Foundation re-grant to present “Jazzing Women: A Celebration of Tap and Jazz Legends”, which was co-produced with tap/interdisciplinary artist, Professor Ann Kilkelly at Virginia Tech University. Currently, Susan is producing “Rhythm Journeys: Masters of Jazz and World Music” with a grant from the NYS Music Fund, established by the NYS Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. For complete event schedule contact: circuit635@earthlink.net or www.circuitproductions.org.
2008 - Ann Kilkelly is Professor of Theatre Arts and Women’s Studies at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she is a teacher, performer, and scholar of tap dancing. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant for her project Tapping the Margins, a past Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian, a published author of creative and scholarly work, a theater director and designer of community based arts events. Most illustriously, Ann is the pink half of the Lloyd and Bunny ukulele playing, tap dancing, and singing act immortalized in the New York Times, which reported, simply, that “she brought down the house.”
2009 Marshall & Jean Stearns
JAZZ DANCE Foreword By the late 1980s, despite the tremendous interest in and worldwide revival of tap dance, it was no longer possible to find a copy of Jazz Dance. We sent out scouts, squirreled copies from each other, Xeroxed chapters for courses we were teaching, and repeatedly called publishers to plead for the return of Jazz Dance to the book shelves. Finally, miraculously, here it is, reissued by Da Capo Press. It is a testimony to the community of dancers, fans, and scholars: we have made ourselves heard. Artists like Bill Robinson, King Rastus Brown, John Bubbles, Honi Coles and others who speak to us in this book, are our Nijinskys, Daighilevs, Balanchines, and Grahams. We honor them by studying their lives and work. This is a book I have read over and over; I will read and recommend it for as long as I am a tap dancer or a student of American History. There are so many books on ballet and modern dance. There are still so few on tap dance and they are so cavalierly allowed to go out of print even though the interest in them is so deep and sustaining. Studying tap dance through this marvelous book is like studying this country’s history, not through its wars and politics but through the creation of its own indigenous art form. It has been over twenty years since Marshall Stearns interviewed the tap dance for this book on jazz and vernacular dance. His introductory remarks read like an obituary; they ring with the sadness, melancholy, and nostalgia of the blues, mourning the loss of this unique dance form, with few presentiments of how and when it would be revived. Many of the dancers died before the first publication of this book; neither they nor Marshall Stearns lived to see the revival and the renaissance of tap dance. This is truly sad, for Marshall would have seen his book become the Bible for the new generation of tap dancers and a reference manual for the tap masters still living who worked so diligently to pass on the tradition as well as the technique. This book gave those dancers a reference point from which to observe both their contributions to, and the history of, their form, They incorporated this history with a new self-consciousness and respect for both tap dance as an art form and the tap dancer as an artist. A new generation of dancers-turned-producers pulled tap dance kicking and screaming into the 70s, 80s, and 90s—applauded but still misunderstood. Practitioners were required to become evangelists and apologists. This book really helped: it gave us credibility and created vocabulary and context for students, critics, producers, teachers, and archivists. With this reissue we can be assured that universities and libraries will have resource materials for students of black history and dance. A new generation of tap dancers and fans will not enjoy this marvelous work that documents a powerful, magnetic, and thoroughly magical history. Brenda Bufalino
“For seven years, Marshall Stearns and his wife made pilgrimages to dimly lit, smoke-filled corners of London, Harlem, and New Orleans to ferret out whatever details legendary dancers such as ‘Groundhog’ or “Pigmeat’ Markham might recall. Their salty accounts would delight tellers of tales in every age. . . As the account progresses from voodoo dances of nineteenth-century New Orleans to contemporary TV productions, a host of colorful performers strut through the pages. . . Dancers such as Ida Forsyne, Rufus Greenlee, and Teddy Drayton were more than mere ‘hoofers.’ They were artists, and the sensitively written account of their trials and successes is a meaningful contribution to the history of the Negro’s struggle for acceptance.” Journal of American Folklore“A very well documented and extremely intelligent appraisal of part of America’s dance heritage that we take all too much for granted…Overwhelmingly this is a significant addition to our dance history…Indispensable for the serious American dance student,” Clive Barnes, The New York Times
2010 - Constance Valis Hill is a jazz tap dancer, choreographer, and scholar of performance studies whose writings have appeared in Dance Magazine, Village Voice, Dance Research Journal, Studies in Dance History, and Discourses in Dance; and in Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African-American Dance (2001), Taken By Surprise: Dance Improvisation Reader (2003), Kaiso! Writings by and about Katherine Dunham (2005), and Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy, Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (2008). She studied tap dance with Charles “Cookie” Cook and various members of the Copasetics; performed as one member of the tap-dancing Doilie Sisters; and directed Sole Sisters for the Changing Times Tap Company. Her book, Brotherhood in Rhythm: the Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers (2000), received the Deems Taylor ASCAP Award. Her forthcoming book, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (Oxford University Press) has been supported by grants from the Rockefeller and John Simon Guggenheim Foundations. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and is a Five College Professor of Dance at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
2011 - Jacqui Malone is a historian of American dance and a professor in the Queens College Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at the City University of New York. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. Her work has also been supported by The Research Foundation (City University of New York). In 2000, Malone received the Preservation of Our Heritage Award, School of American Dance & Arts Management, Oklahoma City University and in 1997, her work was recognized by the Dance Perspectives Foundation. She is a former member of the Eleo Pomare Dance Company and the author of Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance (University of Illinois Press, 1996) and Class Act: The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins (Columbia University Press, 2001). Malone’s writings have appeared in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, The Dance Studies Reader, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin' and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture, When the Spirit Moves, Dance Research Journal, and The Black Perspective in Music.
2012 - Nobuko "Cobi" Narita, producer, director, philanthropist, and founder of Cobi's Place, a gathering for jazz tap dancers, has had a tireless devotion to the jazz community that has spanned more than forty years. Every artist she has presented or assisted becomes part of her jazz family, which means that her extended family has thousands of members. The California-born Japanese American remembers always listening to jazz: "I have always listened to the music we call jazz. It just fit me. And I fit it. I could appreciate different kinds of music—folk, country, hip hop, but I loved jazz music." In California there was a music station that played jazz and Cobi listened to it all the time. She began volunteering at a club called Memory Lane, where such emerging artists as Harry Sweets Edison, Houston Pearson, and Etta Jones performed.In 1941 at age fifteen, the U.S. Military Police abruptly took Japanese- American Narita from her high school classroom in California to the Gila River Detention Camp in Arizona. There she and her siblings (two brothers and two sisters) and parents were detained until the end of World War II, living in a room 20x20. She says it must have been her cultural admonition background never to complain that gave her a positive spirit and strong ambition in spite of her adverse circumstances. Even under these conditions at such a young age Narita started a detention camp newsletter. She used it to let detainees know what was happening throughout the camp, including pregnancies, marriages and always-positive messages. Following the Narita family's release from detention, Cobi completed high school and received a scholarship to Gettysburg College (in Pennsylvania) where she majored in theater. While in college she married and had children, eventually dropping out of college to work; her marriage ultimately ended in divorce.Cobi moved to New York on the 4th of July weekend in 1969 at age forty-four. "I had wanted to live in New York for as long as I remember. It was like a dream to imagine that one day I would move to New York. And the opportunity came to do it: I was offered a great job as Special Assistant to the Executive Vice President of the International Council of Shopping Centers. But I had to run this by my seven children. I'd had seven children in eight years; by this time the oldest was 22 and the youngest just 14. But they were independent children. They really raised themselves while I worked three jobs after their father and I parted. Two jobs were day jobs and I waitressed at night at a restaurant. Upon arriving in New York, which would be her lifetime home, she walked through Central Park. Hearing some good music playing, she discovered the bass player Gene Taylor, an old friend who told her to go to Saint Peter's Church, meet Pastor John Garcia Gensel, and volunteer for his jazz ministry. Shortly after, she volunteered to write grants for Jazz Interactions, an organization devoted to the preservation of jazz, founded in the 1960s by jazz trumpeter Joe Newman and Rigmor Newman (later to marry Harold Nicholas). Jazz interactions did educational programs, concerts, and a community service line, Jazz Line, that listed every jazz gig in the New York area for the week: you could call up from anywhere, listen to who was playing where, and make your plans.In 1972 Cobi went to work as Executive Director of Collective Black Artists, a repertory orchestra and support group for musicians in need. That first year she raised $110,000 for projects, taking only half salary so as to give most of the money to orchestra members that included Stanley Cowell, Frank Foster, and Charles Tolliver. Two and a half years later the three main directors (Reggie Workman, Jimmy Owens and Kenny Rogers) fired Cobi. "They really thought a male black person should be in that job; it just looked better than an Asian woman. I couldn't believe it. Later, they came to me and said that letting me go was the worst mistake they ever made." But by then it was too late to save the group which saw its demise a couple of years after Cobi was let go.In 1976 Cobi founded the Universal Jazz Coalition to present and provide technical assistance to jazz artists. Members of the Board included Betty Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, Melba Liston, Clark Terry, George Wein, and Abbey Lincoln. The Coalition's first jazz festival was presented at the New York Jazz Museum with jazz saxophonist Billy Harper and jazz dancer Pepsi Bethel. While working with the Jazz Collective where she was organizing a weekly gig with a 13-piece orchestra in St. Albans, Queens, Cobi met Paul Ash, who would become her life-long partner. Ash, the owner of the most renowned music store on 48th Street in Manhattan was smitten with Cobi: he asked to drive her home she politely refused, he persisted. "But he kept after me, kept after me, and finally I accepted a date. Really, we were meant to be, right from the very beginning," says Cobi. "He has helped me so much. Without his help, I could have done nothing—I know how to do everything, but Paul always helps out, financially and in other ways. He is wonderful. I like to say we were engaged for seventeen years before we got married."By 1978 Cobi had solidified The New York Women's Jazz Festival, which began as the Universal Jazz Coalition Salute to Women to address the under-representation of women at jazz festivals. Its purpose was simple: "I had always felt women jazz musicians did not get the attention as artists that they should. Club owners will always pick a male leader for a band. And the male leader, with an opportunity to choose among equally qualified musicians, will pick men rather than women. I felt that women needed something like that Kansas City Festival [Women's Jazz Festival] in New York to give them an opportunity to show that they can play. "When that first year's Women's Jazz Festival was presented at the Casablanca Club in New York, so many people attended that they upped the rental fee, locking them out of the venue. "So we held the concert right out in the street!" Cobi remembers. "I'll never forget Mary Lou Williams sitting on a crate eating rice and beans as dignified as if she were in Carnegie Hall. Then George Wein came and saw what had happened to us. He donated Carnegie Recital Hall for the next night. Wasn't that nice!" When a jazz artist needed money, Cobi's organization would help. Not a loan, but a gift. "Sometimes we could do a fundraiser like the one for Papa Jo Jones," says Cobi. "Max Roach and Jamil Nasser co-hosted that one and we were able to present him with $15,000. I also provided thousand-dollar "grants" to young musicians who just needed a little money to help them get to the next level. I knew they were good and I was glad to give them the push."In 1983 Cobi rented a space on Lafayette Street and called it Jazz Center of New York. It was a big loft, 8,300 feet, producing workshops and jam sessions almost every day. In her Vocal Discovery workshops, young musicians learned from such professionals as Abbey Lincoln, Dakota Staton, and Maxine Sullivan, at a cost of $100; if the musician could not afford it, Cobi handed out "scholarships." Several young aspiring musicians came to the Jazz Center, with Cobi considering them her adopted children. The great jazz artists presented at the Jazz Center included Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, Ahmad Jamal, Billy Harper, George Coleman, and Harold Mabern, along with the first Max Roach Double Quartet.In 1995, Cobi was asked to sit on a panel with Lorraine Gordon from the Village Vanguard, writer Leslie Gourse, and singer-organist Sarah McLawler to address the issues facing women in jazz, hoping to attract women artists to come and complain, and vent about how underrepresented women jazz artists were. Out of that panel, International Women in Jazz was born. Cobi served as President for the first three years, Chairman of the Board for the next three, and the advisory board. She also served on the boards of the Flushing Council of Culture and the Arts, Japanese American Association of New York, Asian American Arts Alliance and the advisory board of Y'all of New York. For seven years, she provided Asian American groups for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, when they do their cherry blossom festival every year, and for Arts Connection, winning prestigious awards from the Kennedy Center, the Government of Japan, and Jazz Foundation of America's first Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2005 the Tap Extravaganza's Flo-Bert Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day.Cobi's support of tap dancing has been a constant in her life-long support of jazz. Cobi's Place, right above Sam Ash on 48th Street in New York., was the stronghold of Saturday concerts, films, tap history, and tap jams, presenting such notable historians as Delilah Jackson and Walter Taylor, and pianist Frank Owens, "the tap dancer's best friend." Though Cobi's Place was forced to closed by the New York Fire Marshall due to the lack of public assembly zoning) she seamlessly found a new space for the jazz tap community.In 2010 Cobi founded the Queens Tap Extravaganza at the elegant Flushing Town Hall, expanding the public's awareness of tap dancing across the boroughs. She has been a constant supporter of tap jams at Small's Jazz Club; hosted by Michela Marino Lerman, the jams feature a trio of live musicians and allow young dancers to improvise within the jazz form.Cobi has been a constant star in the jazz community. As bassist Earl May noted, "Cobi is the glue for the jazz family. She holds us all together and she's a guiding light for young musicians." Tap dancers say the same: "Cobi is one of the most giving persons that I have ever, ever in my life known," said tap diva and vocalist Mable Lee. "She gives to everybody. She loves people . . . She is an angel to everybody." The legendary Duke Ellington was known to greet his close friends with a kiss on each cheek: but when greeting Cobi Narita, he would thrice kiss her cheek, in affectionate recognition to the queen of our jazz community.[Sources: Sylvia Levine Leitch, "Cobi Narita: A Special Place for Jazz," JazzTimes (November 11, 2011); Linda Dahl, Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz Women (1984)]
2013 - Ernie Smith, noted jazz dance film historian and lindy hop and tap enthusiast, was a lifelong collector of jazz dance, tap and lindy hop on film, turning his West End apartment into a film museum of jazz history. His collection of footage from 1894 to 1979, consisting of 352 reels of 16mm motion picture film, was donated to the Smithsonian Institute in 1993, and titled The Ernie Smith Jazz Film Collection. Smith began collecting jazz and jazz dance films during the mid-1950s. An Art Director for a New York advertising agency, he had a long-standing interest in jazz and jazz dance that began during his youth in Pittsburgh, Pa. Early on, Smith discovered that jazz music was best appreciated while dancing. He became an accomplished Lindy Hopper, frequenting both white and African American ballrooms. His job at the advertising agency supported Smith's two passions - painting and jazz music and dance. He was also a film enthusiast, so in 1954, after taking a jazz class at the New School taught by leading jazz scholar Marshall Stearns, he began collecting examples of jazz and jazz dance on film. In the process of creating his film collection, he became one of the leading authorities on jazz and jazz dance films. He collaborated with Stearns on the 1964 book Jazz Dance, compiling the book's jazz dance film listing. He also wrote the extensive entry on jazz film for the 1988 edition of New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. On May 25, 1989, Smith was awarded received the Black Patti Award from the Black Patti Foundation, an African American cultural organization founded by historian Delilah Jackson. Smith built his film collection by identifying films of potential interest and acquiring them through trade and purchase. He created lecture reels on specific topics -- the history of jazz, social dance, tap dance, Duke Ellington, Lindy Hop -- and presented lecture/screenings nationally and internationally. He also provided footage for numerous documentaries and maintained active relationships with filmmakers, other film collectors, jazz scholars, the swing dance community, and musicians. After donating his film collection to the Archives Center in 1993, he continued to lecture and participate in swing dance activities, devoting the majority of his time to painting and related artistic pursuits. Constance Valis Hill
2013 - Sally Sommer (9/23/1939- ), dance historian, critic, filmmaker, and master teacher, whose style of describing dance influenced dozens of writers across the country, was born, in Tucson, Arizona. Trained as a musician, she arrived in New York City in 1967, and in 1969 was one of the first to attend the now famous Tap Happenings, weekly jam sessions at the Bert Wheeler Theater at the Hotel Dixie, where she saw such veteran hoofers as Chuck Green, Raymond Kaalund, Howard “Sandman” Sims Derby Wilson: Lon Chaney, Sims, Rhythm Red, Green, Jerry Ames, Raymond Kaalund, Jimmy Slyde, and Bert Gibson. In the 1970s, after receiving a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University, she became increasingly involved in New York’s tap dance scene. Writing for The Village Voice, she became one of the leading dance critics to document tap performance and to evolve a descriptive style that replicated the personality of the tap dancer, as evidenced in a 1991 review of a performance featuring Ted Levy and Van Porter who Sommer described as a wild tap duo: “Slick and chic, Levy sports an off-center, flattop pompadour and slaps down taps with Nicholas Brothers bravado. Porter is a gangly guy with an endearing smile and jutting elbows and knees; he keeps leaping up in double aerial tours, collapsing, and bouncing back like a weightless puppet. Although they dance in unison, each performs with such individual brio that you get multiple images of a single step. This is tap as Cubist performance.” In the 1980s, Sommer toured extensively with jazz film historian Ernie Smith in a film and lecture series called Fascinating Rhythms. In 1983 they presented the film and slide screening, American Black Dance on Film: The Development of Black Tap and Social Dance, in which Sommer spoke about the indispensable contributions of African-American dance and percussion in the development of stage dancing and social dancing in the U.S. In 1986, Sommer was a participating member of the Colorado Dance Festival’s Tap Summit (co-directed by Sali Ann Kriegsman and Marda Kirn) which brought together a number of leading and legendary African-American and European-American artists presenting the first two-week rhythm tap festival ever held; with classes, lecture demonstrations, historical lectures, and film and video screenings. From this event was founded the International Tap Dance Association, with Sommer as the first editor of the International Tap Association (ITA) Journal.Teaching tap history and popular performance at such prestigious institutions as New York’s City College and Duke University, Sommers in 2001 settled in at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she became a full professor, teaching in the master’s program in dance and becoming a leading expert on dance in American popular culture. As a dance critic and performance journalist, she has continued to write regularly for such dance periodicals Dance Research Journal. In 2012 Sommer released the long-awaited documentary Check Your Body at the Door, an exhaustive 30-year collaborative project which she directed documenting New York’s underground club dancing; preserving on film the voguing style of such masters as Willy Ninja. Constance Valis Hill
2014 - George T. Nierenberg (Director/Producer and Founder of GTN Creative) is an acclaimed filmmaker whose career has spanned the worlds of independent features, network, cable and international television, and corporate videos. His work has been released by MGM/UA, has appeared on CBS, ABC, Bravo, BCC, and has earned numerous illustrious honors, establishing him as a producer/director with a knack both for managing complex productions and for bringing his subjects to life. He is known for his ability to create visually strong stories that bring out the humanity in their subjects and reach audiences on an emotional level, which is why corporate clients like Pfizer, Cisco, McDonald’s, Mercedes-Benz, IBM, Zeiss, the National Patient Safety Foundation, Jack Morton and PineRock have sought Mr. Nierenberg’s services. His work is unique, creative, always entertaining, always moving, and always effective in its message. Most recently Nierenberg’s films No Maps on My Taps and About Tap have been released theatrically in New York City and in over 20 theaters around the country.
2015 - Carl Tobias Schlesinger (Printer, Historian, Composer, Entertainer) was born on Oct. 12, 1926, in the Bronx. A former typesetter at The New York Times, Carl died at the age of 88, on November 9, 2014. Mr. Schlesinger spent 35 years at The Times, much of it working the graveyard shift in the composing room at the paper’s former building on West 43rd Street. He was in his early 50s when The Times switched from using Linotype, a hot-metal printing technique invented in the 1880s, to cold type, generated by computers. Mr. Schlesinger became one of the “stars” of “Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu,” a 29-minute documentary film with a title that Linotype operators would instantly recognize. Mr. Schlesinger also narrated the film, which was directed by David Loeb Weiss.Mr. Schlesinger became an expert on the Linotype as well as on Mergenthaler. He became an apprentice printer with Fairchild Publications in 1946 and first joined The Times in 1952. Mr. Schlesinger, who was active in education programs run by the typographical union, left the paper to work elsewhere for periods, including in 1967, when he moved to Africa to help develop a printing training program in Nairobi. By 1975, he was back at The Times.
Besides his daughter Laura, his survivors include his wife of 61 years, the former Renée Blankfield; two other daughters, Tia Amdurer and Jeanne Buesser; five grandchildren; and a great-grandson. David Weiss died in 2005.
As a boy, Mr. Schlesinger sang and danced on the sidewalk outside Broadway theaters. Decades later, in the 1980s, he took up tap-dancing and became a prominent organizer of tap-dancing performances in New York and elsewhere, including “Tap Extravaganza,” which celebrates National Tap Dance Day, on May 25. He was featured in two other documentaries, “Heart and Sole: Twenty Years of Tap Extravaganza,” and the 2012 documentary “Linotype: The Film.”
His interest in printing was not limited to its past. After the Linotypes were retired, he learned computerized typesetting and continued to work at The Times until 1990. He composed a march, “The New York Times Color March,” which was given its premier by the Goldman Memorial Band at Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center in 2000.
2015 - Al Heyward is a native born New Yorker, from East Harlem. Al still resides in New York City. Along with his favorite musical team, Rogers and Hart, Heyward’s love for music was born in the 2nd grade at PS39. In Junior High School, he was a part of the first ever boro-wide chorus of Manhattan, led by Dizzy Gillespie’s best friend; John Motley. Al Heyward got involved with Tap Dancing after watching the Great “Peg Leg” Bates at the Apollo Theater, and Fred Astaire in “Million Dollar Movie”. At Baruch College, he joined Playrads, a theater group, and appeared in several plays including “The Lion In Winter”, “Boys In The Band”, and several musical concerts. After college, Al worked for many not-for-profit organizations, Montefiore Medical Center, and is currently on Faculty at Manhattan College.In Mr. Heyward’s free time, he became involved in The National Musical Theater, with Executive Director Paulette Attie. He also helped produce several musical reveues. After the National Musical Theater, he became involved with the Black Patti Foundation, headed by Delilah Jackson. Al has been involved in every production of “Tap Extravaganza”, the celebration of National Tap Dance Day (May 25th) since its inception. Through Delilah Jackson, he met Jean Bach, the “Queen of Jazz” and Producer of “A Great Day In Harlem”. Mr. Heyward received an on-screen credit from Ms. Bach for helping on the production. Through Ms. Jackson, Al met Nobuko ‘Cobi’ Narita. With Ms. Narita, he has co-produced the Queen’s version of “Tap Extravaganza” and the regular “Tap Extravaganza” for the last few years. Al Heyward is the recipient of the American Tap Dance Foundation’s 2015 Tap Preservationist Award.
2016 - Germaine Ingram is a jazz tap dancer, choreographer, songwriter, and vocal and dance improviser whose work channels styles and traditions learned from legendary Philadelphia hoofer LaVaughn Robinson (1927-2008), who was her teacher, mentor, and performance partner for more than twenty-five years. Since her work with Robinson, she has created choreography for national tap companies; performed as a solo artist, collaborated and performed with noted jazz composers and instrumentalists, including Odean Pope, Tyrone Brown, Dave Burrell, Diane Monroe, Francois Zayas, and Bobby Zankel, and created performance works and installations with visual, media and sound artists. Germaine has collaborated with dance artists rooted in diverse genre, including Leah Stein (modern dance and contact improvisation), Rosario Toledo (flamenco) and Jungwoong Kim (improvisation and Korean traditional dance). She has engaged in intensive study with such artists as Dave Burrell (music improvisation), Rhiannon Watson (vocal improvisation), Pierre Trombert (mime), Jean-Rene Toussaint (theater), Nina Martin (dance improvisation), Miguel Gutierrez (dance composition) and Pauline Oliveros (music and deep listening), Through choreography, music composition, performance, writing, production, oral history projects, and designing and leading artist learning environments, she explores themes related to history, collective memory, and social justice. Since 2008 Germaine has engaged in an ongoing reflection, through original music and dance, on the practice of slavery at the President’s House-- the nation’s first white house-- during the tenure of President George Washington. In 2012-2013 she designed and led a professional learning community of twelve percussive and improvisatory dancers whose work is driven by collective memory, history, and social justice concerns. In 2012/13 she was commissioned by the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts to create an evening-length production inspired by the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in the late 18th Century. In 2014 she created and performed an hour-length performance work reflecting on the plight of Southern women in the last horrific year of the Civil War for Atlanta, GA’s 150-year commemoration of the Battle of Atlanta. In 2015 she created and performed an evening-length performance for the VivaDanca International Festival in Salvador, Brazil. In February 2016 she was resident artist and keynote speaker/performer for Brandeis University’s annual festival of social justice. Currently, Germaine is a collaborator in a two-year, multi-disciplinary exploration of how art addresses occurrences of sudden loss of human life. She has been consulted by public history sites on performance strategies for interpreting places, narratives and objects related to slavery. She was a 2010 Pew Foundation Fellow in the Arts, and a 2014 resident fellow of the Sacatar Institute at Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil. She received, among other awards, an Artist of the City Award from Painted Bride Art Center; Transformation Award (2008) and Art & Change Award (2012) from the Leeway Foundation; Rocky Award (2011) from DanceUSA /Philadelphia; Philadelphia Folklore Project’s Award for Folk Arts & Cultural Heritage Practice (2012). Her projects have been funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Independence Foundation, Leeway Foundation, Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Wyncote Foundation, and Lomax Family Foundation. She is often consulted by individual artists and arts organizations for assistance with program conceptualization, strategic planning, resource development and grant writing. A former civil rights and trial lawyer, law professor, and school district executive officer, she has served on numerous boards of non-profit organizations and foundations dedicated to education reform, supporting arts and culture, and arts education.
2017 - Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library The New York Public Library began collecting dance materials in 1944. Since then, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division has grown to become the largest dance archive in the world with an extensive collection featuring all forms of dance, and with materials dating back to the 1400s. The first curator of the Division, who built the most significant part of the collection, was Genevieve Oswald. The collection contains both circulating materials which can be checked out and taken home, as well as research materials for use in the Library. All materials are open to anyone in possession of a valid New York Public Library card. The Dance Division is the archival home of many of the largest dance companies in the world including the Joffrey Ballet Company and American Ballet Theater, and is the repository of dance legends such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Agnes de Mille, Merce Cunningham, Isadora Duncan and, of course, Jerome Robbins. The Dance Division received a lifetime achievement Bessie in 2016 for service in the field of dance.Tap materials in the Dance Division include the Paul Draper papers, the Jerry Ames papers, the writings of Jane Goldberg and the Pete Nugent papers, many oral histories of tap icons including Brenda Bufalino and Mable Lee, rare objects including a silk broadside of Master Juba’s tour of England in 1848 and a wealth of unique tap moving image footage of dancers such as Jimmy Slyde, the Copasetics, Leticia Jay, Lon Chaney, Tony Waag, Sandman Sims and Chuck Green, much of it filmed as part of the Division’s Original Documentations project.
2018 - Charlie Steiner Award-winning filmmaker, photographer and media educator is a widely published photojournalist and a videographer whose footage has been aired on TV stations worldwide.Steiner’s photojournalism has been in the public since he was in high school. He covered the years of protest and pop in the 1960's and 70's, taking photos of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, anti-war demos, be-ins and important political and popular personalities from Ali to Zappa, including Bob Dylan, Robert Kennedy, Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley and Andy Warhol. In the 1980’s and ‘90s his photojournalism appeared in the major magazines of the US, Europe, and Japan, including LIFE, Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, TIME, Paris Match and Stern. He’s photographed Eleanor Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, covered Pope John Paul II at the White House, Raquel Welch on Broadway, a military coup in Bolivia, the Palestinian/Israeli struggle, revolutionary guerillas in the Philippines and the end of Communism in Europe. Steiner is best known journalistically for his coverage of the Shah of Iran in exile [1979 - 80 for Paris Match] and the last years of Marcos and the People Power Revolution in the Philippines [1981-90 for Newsweek]. He has been a photography editor, did industrial/architectural photography, and continues as a fine art photographer. He’s had one-person shows in New York, Boston, Tokyo and Montreal and been included in numerous group exhibits. Recent shows include the group show “Andy Warhol: Dylan to Duchamp” at Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton NY (2010) and a one-person exhibit "Highway '67 Revisted" at Kedar Studio, Newark NJ (2011) and at the New Orleans Jazz Festival (2012). Since 1985 Steiner has been an independent documentary producer and videographer. A pioneer in the use of small video cameras for broadcast, his footage has aired on the newscasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and stations in Canada and Japan – featuring his exclusive reports on insurrections and upheaval in the Philippines, Poland and the former Soviet Union. His own documentaries examine the relationship between culture and politics. NOTHING TO LOSE, about the culture of protest among young people in Poland, foretold the collapse of Communism. HOME BASE – A LOVE STORY looks at the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines, while SOMETHING HAPPENED reveals aspects of the multiple cultures of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic republics during and after the velvet revolutions of the early 1990's. Steiner also makes documentaries about - and with - performing artists, in locations from West Texas to East Bengal. He has been working with Japanese avant-garde dancer Min Tanaka since 1979, which will result in a feature-length documentary MOVING MAN. AMI PAGOL (I AM CRAZY) is about Bengali mystic musicians while DAYS OF SPLENDOR is about contemporary Jewish mysticism. For two years Steiner produced a weekly program for New York City cable television, presenting new video documentaries. Steiner is an important producer/director of dance films and received the Pew Fellowship in Dance/Media at UCLA. He is a major contributor to the Lincoln Center Dance Library in New York, with over 75 programs in the collection.
2019 - Hank Smith (May 15, 1946 - ) born in New York City Hank Smith is an interdisciplinary performance artist, dancer, director / choreographer, tap historian who emerged as the generation of young dancers in the so-called tap renaissance of the 1970s, has a rich and varied performance background. Trained as a dancer, mime, clown, and actor, he explores aspects of human relationships. The backbone of his work is rhythm, manifested in the percussive use of voice, the body and improvisational rhythm tap dancing, all of which are used to carry out the African American tradition of "stomping the blues."In the late 1970s, Smith began the study of tap dance with veteran master Charles "Cookie" Cook at New York's Clark Center for the Performing Arts. He was subsequently introduced to such master veterans of jazz tap as James Buster Brown, Marion Coles, and all the surviving members of The Copasetics, that fraternity of largely African-American tap dancers founded in 1949 in the memory of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Though he studied mime and clowning, performing in Mexico at the El Encuentro Nacional y Internacional de la Nueva Pantomima (1984), and Kyogen theater in Japan (1984), Smith remained loyal to the tart of tap dance.
In 1998 Smith hosted six evenings of performance / conversations with master tap dancers called The Story of Tap. Commissioned by Dixon Place as part of its 1998 Mondo Cane! Series, this imaginative six-part series of interviews and performances with tap dancers took shape as a resolutely informal talkathon, pausing for live tapping and film footage, with dancers of different traditions.
In 1997 Smith directed and choreographed, Stormy, a new musical based on the 1942 film musical Stormy Weather, at New Jersey's Bloomfield College. His work has also been presented at The Gowanus Arts Exchange, The Kitchen, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and Movement Research.
Smith has over thirty years experience in television production, having worked at WPIX-TV, ABC, NBC, PBS and on independent productions. For twenty years he was with Sesame Street, where he functioned as stage manager, associate director, choreographer and performer. He is a recipient of a 1999 New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship Award in Interdisciplinary Performance and a 2001 BAXten Arts and Artists in Progress Award.
In the mid-1990s, Smith founded the Copasetics Connection with Megan Haungs, Michela Marino-Lerman, Jun Maruta, and Toes Tiranoff. In 1999, Smith created a solo multimedia performance, Smitty, Me, and NYC, combining 16mm film footage of New York City and Harlem shot by his late father, Hanry J. Smith, and mixing images with text, tap dance, and improvisation to develop a work about a father and son's relationship to each other and to New York.[Source: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]
2020 - Laraine Goodman, producer, director, tap dancer has produced critically acclaimed tap and rhythm-theater shows in NYC spanning the past 30 years. In the 1990s her shows included Rhythm Connection series at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, outdoor shows Club 124 (on her stoop) and Traffic Jam (up to the present) at the HUB and Chelsea Market Jams. In the early 2000s, she wrote, directed and performed in a tap theater show, The Shoe Tree of Life Café at One Dream Theater in Tribeca.
Laraine’s work also includes producing and directing numerous tap shows at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club (1999-2015): The Woman Under The Bed (prior version at The Nuyorican); Vaudeville 2000; Vaudeville 2000: Milking the Millennium; From Bamiyan to the Bowery; A Brief Look at Everything and Nothing; Space, Time, Tempo at La MaMa La Galleria; Muse & Amuse at La Galleria. Her most recent sold out production was Let Me Be Frank, 100th Birthday tribute to Frank Sinatra at The Club at La MaMa.
She was involved with Woodpeckers Tap Dance and Inter Arts Studio, Co-Producing the Full Moon Café artist salon with Brenda Bufalino and producing Women in Tap shows at the studio in early 1989-90.
Laraine has also taught tap dance and art at Grace Church School, The Go Project, and for other independent arts organizations. Her teachers and mentors include Brenda Bufalino, Gregory Hines, Jimmy Slyde, Ted Levy, Barbara Duffy, Margaret Morrison, Savion Glover and Buster Brown among others. She co-founded “The Cramp Rolls” a tap trio including Patricia Tortorici, Janice Zwail and herself. Laraine also produced Bojangles Birthday Jam at Le Petit Versailles Garden in the East Village. Most recently, Laraine has become the Chair of Flo-Bert, Ltd and co-produced and co-hosted “TapEx 2021”
She has been awarded four Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) grants for her outdoor Traffic Jam shows. LMCC also awarded Laraine a Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant for her tap theater production, Dancing from Bamiyan to the Bowery. She has conducted Tap/Talk sessions at Tap City. Also awarded a Flo-Bert and is now Chairperson of “TapEx”. Laraine is thrilled to be the recipient of ATDF/Tap City’s Tap Preservation Award 2020. She thanks the masters of tap for her love of tap dance and discovering the richness of its history and form.
2021 - Alfred Bruce Bradley, performing artist and educator, is a Flint Michigan native, Mr. Bradley is the founder of Tapology Tap Festival for Youth, The Flintstone Hoofers and co-founder of Creative Expressions Dance Studio. In the Detroit area he teaches tap at the Fem Fatale Dance Studio, The Motor City Dance Factory and Miss Harriett’s Dance Studio.
Bradley is a graduate of Alabama State University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and began his theatrical training. Upon returning to the Flint area after college he became actively involved with the McCree Theatre as a performing artist. As a result of his work through the McCree Theatre he was given the opportunity to work professionally in the hit Off Broadway musical “One Mo Time” in the lead role as Papa Du which resulted in an extended run at The Village Gate in Toronto, Ontario.
Other notable performance experiences would include the off Broadway musical “Staggerlee”, “Rollin With Stevens and Stewart”, “A Raisin In The Sun”, the Broadway hit musical “Black and Blue” it’s world tour in which he teamed with his mentor and teacher, the late great Lloyd Storey from Detroit, MI to perform the “Class Act”. He has performed “David Danced For The Lord” from Ellington’s Sacred Works with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Cleveland Tri City Jazz Festival. Mr. Bradley can be seen as a regular in the Flint Institute Of Music’s production of “The Nut Cracker” as Drosselmeyer and is also a member of the Flint Institute of music’s Jubilee Chorale singers.
2022 - Yvonne Edwards, Washington, D.C.'s "Tap Lady", has been dancing, teaching, and choreographing for over 70 years. A co-founder of Knock On Wood Tap Studio (1994 - today) and Tappers With Attitude Youth Ensemble (1991-2010), Ms. Yvonne has taught master classes at the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference, Chicago Human Rhythm Project, Tap City, and throughout the mid-Atlantic region. Her choreography is included in the repertoire of Tappers With Attitude Youth Ensemble, Step Aside Tap Company, Cole-Harrison Dance Company, Morgan State Dance Ensemble, and Capitol Tap.
Awards include Tap Teacher Award at the New York City Tap Festival (2004), Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Award for Education at the Montgomery County (Maryland) County Executive's Ball (2006), and the Pola Nirenska Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Metro DC Dance Awards (2007). She received the Contribution to Dance in the District award as a longtime participant in the Washington Performing Arts Society's Artists In Schools Program (1993) and was recognized in 2013 at the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference.
2023 - Drika Overton A veteran of over 30 years as a tap and percussive dance artist, Drika Overton has been a leader in the resurgence of the vital American art of tap dance. Her original choreography and rhythmic compositions embody influences as diverse as early jazz vernacular movement and traditional jazz tap, West African and Afro-Cuban dance and drum, Celtic dance and music, and Japanese taiko and body percussion. The outcome is innovative and captivating, full of visual and rhythmic inventiveness.
Drika has shared the stage with many legendary artists including Savion Glover, Jimmy Slyde, Buster Brown, Brenda Bufalino, Fayard Nicholas, and Bill Irwin and has worked with many internationally recognized musicians. She has been the creative force in the formation of several innovative ensembles, from Take Five, a five-woman rhythm dance group in San Francisco, to StopTime, a premier jazz tap ensemble in New England in the late 1980’s. In the 1990’s she cofounded the trio Suite:Feet with musicians Kevin Farley and Steven Bracciotti and in 2003 partnered with legendary Maine luthier and ukulele player, Joel Eckhaus to create the vaudeville duo Ham & Legs. Drika has also been a featured soloist at the Duke Theater in New York as part of the New York City Tap Festival; the Southeastern TapExplosion in Atlanta; RhythmExplosion, Bozeman, Mont.; the Bates Dance Festival; the New England Artist’s Congress; The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Shipyard Project; on Public Television; and at numerous jazz clubs, concerts, and festivals.
In 2007 Drika was selected to participate in the first New England Dance Lab, a Regional Dance Development Initiative of the National Dance Project. Also in 2007 New England Presenters commissioned her and composer Paul Arslanian, with support from the New England Foundation for the Arts, to create a new touring project, Off the Beaten Path: A Jazz & Tap Odyssey, which toured New England in 2008-2009.
In 1995 Drika created the Portsmouth Percussive Dance Festival, an internationally recognized week long summer festival of music, dance and song. From the creative energy of the festival over its many years Drika created MaD Theatricals, a unique collaboration of nationally and internationally celebrated jazz and tap artists including Brenda Bufalino, Josh Hilberman, Dean Diggins and Paul Arslanian, that produced the critically acclaimed Clara's Dream A Jazz Nutcracker (2000), and Music Hall Follies: A Vaudeville in 9 Acts (2003), with special guest artists Bill Irwin and Fayard Nicholas. The Follies was an integral part of Drika’s large scale Portsmouth Vaudeville Project (1999-2003) that included the video documentary 4 Theatres: Remembering Portsmouth in the Age of Vaudeville which aired on NH Public Television and at film festivals around the country.
Drika has received four Spotlight on the Arts Awards from the Seacoast Newspapers as Best Dancer and for Best Dance Production for Clara's Dream a jazz nutcracker, a production also featured in the BBC documentary "Fascinating Rhythms." She has received an Artist Fellowship and New Works grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts as well as grants from the Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Art Builds Community! funded by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, and The New England Foundation for the Arts. In 2007 she was awarded the New Hampshire Governor’s Arts Award for Distinguished Arts Leadership.
Drika teaches master classes and residencies at schools, colleges and universities, studios, and festivals throughout the United States. Dance companies at Rhode Island College, Auburn University, and dancers and ensembles countrywide have performed her choreography. She is currently on the Theater Dance Department Faculty at The Boston Conservatory.