Something's afoot: It makes a lot of tapping sounds and it's lots of fun; it's being acknowledged on screen, on stage and more than once in the nation's "Newspaper of Record."
Photo: Maestro Rob Kapilow
In a salute to the origins of tap and to Black History Month, Rob Kapilow's Tap Dance Concerto will have its world premiere at Lincoln Center on February 3. Kapilow composed his Tap Dance Concerto in collaboration with tap great Ayodele Casel a stunning tap dancer, actor and the only woman in Savion Glover's company "N.Y.O.T.s". Tap dancing is on the rebound, and it's all music! In an article on December 28, the New York Times's outgoing dance critic, John Rockwell, saluted tap dancing's acknowledged greatest performer, Savion Glover, and his oddly unacknowledged role in the success of the hugely popular computer-animated movie Happy Feet. Only two weeks earlier, Rockwell's colleague Claudia La Rocco wrote a Times article entitled "Pushing Tap's Limits, With (or Without) Heels", stating: "Grass-roots efforts are part of a growing movement by tap-dancers in their 20s and 30s," and describing tap dance events at New York's Symphony Space and its cutting-edge Dixon Place, and at Chicago's Harris Theater all follow-ups to Mr. Glover's trend-setting 1996 hit "Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk."
So it can't be an accident that the popular "Listening Guru" Rob Kapilow, beloved of audiences from coast to coast, whose motto is "It's all music!", has composed with tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel his first Tap Dance Concerto, and it will receive its premiere at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall on Saturday, February 3, with Casel in the starring role. Kapilow's Tap Dance Concerto was commissioned by three organizations with which he has performed for some years: Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and Vancouver's Music in the Morning. The Tap Dance Concerto will be performed as part of an hour-long presentation* especially tailored for youngsters and their families, involving plenty of audience participation and active listening. Kapilow's collaborator on the work is Ayodele Casel, whose energy and youthfulness comparable only to Rob's belie her depth of experience and range as a seasoned and sought-after performer and choreographer. The only female member in Savion Glover's company, NYOTs, Casel has also shared the stage with the late Gregory Hines and numerous other tap greats. Kapilow and Casel conceived the concerto together from the beginning, sharing their respective inspirations, resources and tools-of-the-trade and thus giving the piece a multi-dimensional feel that will be enhanced even more when audiences provide their active and interactive elements. Casel and Kapilow will teach the audience the basics of tap and rhythm as they sit in their seats and by the end of the afternoon presentation they will not only understand more about music, dance and rhythm, but their hands and feet will be needed to participate in the concerto itself. "I feel like this year we've grown up," Ms. Casel told the New York Times's Claudia LaRocca.
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"I've gone from the talent who gets hired or is waiting to be hired, to somebody who is, like, 'I need to make this opportunity for myself and consequently make it happen for the art form.' Who else is going to do it? Who loves tap dancing more than we do?" The composition, the first tap dance concerto of the 21st century and only the second in living memory, is the first successor to a famous 1952 work by the popular American composer Morton Gould, who died in 1996. It is scored for solo dancer and 12 members of the "FamilyMusik Players". The timing of its first performance during Black History Month is fitting in light of the African-American origin of tap dance. An article in Smithsonian magazine states: "The origins of tap dance can be traced to the antebellum South when African-American slaves, adept at copying Irish jigs, Virginia reels and Lancashire clogging, improvised and embellished those dances with their own African-style rhythms and movements. Popular on the vaudeville circuit and even more so in 1920s and 30s movies and theater, tap dance entered a long dormancy in the 50s and 60s, partly as a result of the black pride movement." Classic films with white dancers like Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller and Gene Kelly have helped keep the tap dance flame alive, but it is through the popularity of such great tappers as Savion Glover, the late Gregory Hines, and Gregory's idol, Sammy Davis, Jr. leading to huge successes of Broadway shows like Eubie, Jelly's Last Jam and Glover's Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk that tap dance has become mainstream again. "It's all music," Rob Kapilow's mantra, applies as much to his new Tap Dance Concerto as to any of his other works for both adults and children. A comment in the Boston Herald applies for audiences all over the country: "Rob Kapilow knows how to talk to kids. He combines the high energy of a television game-show host and the quicker-than-they are mental agility of a savvy teacher." The "Listening Guru" himself explains the origin of his new piece: "About six years ago I did a FamilyMusik program in Boston about tap-dancing. This included giving out linoleum tiles to every kid in the audience and teaching them the basics of tap (flaps and shuffles etc.) as well as some combinations that related to the choreography we were doing on stage. Tap proved to be a fantastic route into rhythm and music for the kids, and although the music for that early experimental program was accompanied by a rudimentary 'Broadway-style' pianist, I felt at the time that music as creative and sophisticated as the dancing especially if it were created directly for and with the dancing could make a first-rate, artistic, educational, and exhilarating program." Kapilow's range of activities is extremely broad, including his What Makes It Great?© and FamilyMusik© presentations, his "Citypieces" and his other compositions. His popularity and appeal have been reflected in several notable recent invitations: to appear on NBC's Today Show, in conversation with Katie Couric, and to work with law students and physicians on interactive listening, as well as writing his book. Ayodele Casel, Rob Kapilow's collaborator on the Tap Dance Concerto, is a native New Yorker who began her professional training at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She is also a graduate of a two-year professional training acting program with William Esper. Ayodele was a featured soloist in the new production "Imagine Tap!" and has been developing her own work, "Diary of a Tap Dancer". Ayodele has choreographed, directed and presented works for various organizations, including "Lincoln Center Out of Doors", Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, The Triad Theater and Joe's Pub. Rob Kapilow's Tap Dance Concerto: Performances: February 3, 2007: Alice Tully Hall, New York City (world premiere): 2 & 4 pm. March 10, 2007: Bank of America Celebrity Series, Tsai Center, Boston: 12pm & 2pm. May 6, 2007: Music in the Morning, Chan Centre, UBC, Vancouver, Canada: 3 pm.
Media contact: performers@operaweb.com & 21C Media Group.
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