Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Just like a comedian has a certain joke or a jazz musician has a riff that they know will get the crowd, a tap dancer always has a step.
I try new stuff every time I perform. I have steps I do that I know are definite, and stuff I can make up right then and there and then forget.
I come from a long line of people who express themselves through the dance. I come from a long line of people who create music through their feet.
I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all.
La Cave was a great platform for me to learn and be able to listen in on conversations and just get a lot of notes and teachings from those older guys.
I used to think I had this responsibility to carry on this tradition. Now I just feel like I have to keep the dance out there, keep it in the public eye.
The spirituality of the dance, that's something that's evolved for me in the past ten years or so. I'm still trying to figure out where that's taking me.
I've changed my whole angle for dance. I'm moving towards moving back rather than hanging out with my peers. I'm reaching back to older dudes for a second.
I search for different tonalities in my taps. But my greatest pleasure is hearing a note I haven't heard before, hearing a chord that sparks something new.
I was always looking at footage of dancers from Nicholas Brothers to Ralph Brown to Sand Man to Miller Brothers and Lois, and I grew up looking at old footage.
Every now and then, someone comes along - we used to call it 'New Jack' - tries to do something new, tries to take all the credit, without acknowledging the past.
They all come from the street - tap, jazz and flamenco. And the streets are always changing. If it comes from the streets, change is the only thing that's consistent.
Movie making is such a long process, and they only use that one take, although you do it over and over about 30 times. Live theatre is that one time and one time only.
When you think about John Coltrane, in my opinion - and I think I share this opinion with a lot of people - his approach to music changed other people's approach to music.
Great athletes last because they let the mental do all the work. What we do as hoofers is not so much a physical strain as everybody thinks. It's more of a mental stretch.
I want tap to be something danced in arenas. Sort of like a rock group. Other art forms happen every night. Take theater, opera; there's always opera happening every night.
The Nicholas Brothers were the best tap-dancers. I'm not talking about their flash-dancing, I'm talking about tap-dancing. They were really saying something with their feet.
I don't like being too serious. I'm the type of person that, if the mike isn't in the right place when I go on, I just move it. Other people, they'll be all frantic. I'm more relaxed.
What does genius mean? God has put us here specifically... every person has a job or journey to do. It's just a matter of finding what we're here to fulfill or execute. That's genius to me.
When you find real jazz on the radio dial, it comes in all static-y. It's just like tap dancers. You have to go uptown to find the real hoofers. We only come to midtown if we're called upon.
There are many different styles of, and approaches to, tap. My own leans towards a more intellectual view: tap dancing not just for the sake of entertainment but to educate and spark emotion.
I feel it's my duty, my job, now to allow people to hear the dance to different genres of music, to ensure audiences have the chance to listen to tap dancing up against all these other styles.
I was a drummer in a group called Three Plus. We were performing at a club in New York, and my mother signed me up for tap classes. I fell in love from the door... so you can blame it on my mother.
What we're looking for at my school is intellectuals. People who want to talk about the art and be knowledgeable about it. People who want to know the history. Not everybody needs to be performing.
I was very happy with the success of 'Noise/Funk,' but of course, there is a lot more that I have to say about the dance, about the history, about the people involved with the dance and their history.
My show mode is that the dressing room is like going into the cockpit. Going down the stairs is like going on the runway, and once we begin performing, it's flight time. I'm just floatin' on that stage.
The sound of tap is not 'clickety clickety tap tap,' this monotone thing. The sound of tap has depth. We want you to hear the different highs and lows, the bass, the trebles and the melodies, if you can.
There are people who take tap class, do a tap dance. And then there are people who know the dance, who know why they take tap classes. Who know why they do 20 shuffles, or 50 shuffles, before they go on.
It wasn't until I did a musical revue in Paris in the 1980s called 'Black and Blue,' and met the great men and women responsible for the progress of tap dance, that my relationship with the dance really began.
I'm still growing, still learning. I'm still open and vulnerable enough to know there's much more to be taught to me and learned by me. I hope I don't reach my pinnacle on this earth where I think I know it all.
I was first introduced to dancing through the TV: I remember watching ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing when I was very little. But I felt no connection with it whatsoever: it was just like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.
It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.
I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don't get into a position where they're saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died.
Frank Sinatra changed people's approach to singing. Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, van Gogh, they were all part of movements that allowed people to think about their craft differently. They changed the game. These people changed the game.
When I'm on TV or whatever, I'm able to bring my instruments, my board, and my sound is intact. But other kids who are on TV, when they're doing tap, sometimes they're just on the regular floor. It's not as safe; it's not as sound-worthy as it should be.
The connection of what I do to flamenco lies in the whole lament, whole cry, whole pouring back into the earth and giving energy back to the earth. It's a cry and a celebration. That's what music, sound, vibration should do. It should spark energy in someone.
I am realizing and accepting my role as a tap dancer in this world is not only to tap dance for the sake of performance, but through tap dance be able to share and spread a message and congregate with people I would not necessarily be with had it not been for dance.
There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.
I never really stop and think about should I put my hat on this way or that, not thinking that little JoJo down the street would be copying that. I'm more conscious about it now and tell the kids that it's not about the shoes or what kind of shoes... it's all about the dance.
My mom couldn't afford dance shoes, so she put me in these old cowboy boots with a hard bottom so I could get some sound out. I used them for seven months. When I finally got real tap shoes, I was nervous. I kept moving my feet, thinking, 'Oh, so this is how it's supposed to sound.'
I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.
I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap.
My personal style at this point in my life is more audio; it's more driven on less visual and more musicality. But because of my upbringing, my fabulous mentors and teachers that I've had throughout my dance journey or career, I also possess a style that is of the past. It was just a matter of me reaching back.
Tap dancing is like... it's equivalent to music, not only for the African American community, but also for the world. Tap dancing is like language; it's like air: it's like everything else that we need in order to survive. I'm blessed and honored to be knowledgeable of the art form and to be a part of the art form.