Get in the Rhythm of Life

By K.C. Patrick

Bringing together tappers to share the legacy

The St. Louis Tap Festival is not just about technique; it’s about passing on the history, philosophy, and culture of tap. For the past thirteen years, Robert L. Reed Tap Heritage, Inc. has sponsored this unique week of community and education. The week-long festival echoes the motto of the “Gateway” city with a faculty of traditional master teachers on one hand and young tap masters who are still pushing at frontiers of rhythm and sound on the other. Many old masters have come to share at the St. Louis Tap Festival: Peg Leg Bates, Bunny Briggs, Buster Brown, Ernest Brown, Fred Kelly, Henry LeTang, the Nicholas Brothers, Donald O’Connor, and Jimmy Slyde. At the same time, the likes of Bril Barrett, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Savion Glover, Avi Miller and Ofer Ben, Rosie Radiator, and Jason Samuels have filled classes of eager students.

Robert L. Reed, founder, producer, and artistic director is what might be called a transitional figure, the best of both worlds. As a performer for most of his life, Reed was a protégé of Maceo Anderson, one of the versatile Four Step Brothers. He rubbed shoulders, traded eights, and survived as an artist in a segregated performing arts culture along with those we now think of as stars of yesterday. Although he says he has given up break dancing and pop-locking, he is still an energetic, athletic performer, only last fall debuting a weekly television show in Japan called Robert Hall. As an educator, he is in demand for master classes throughout the world as time allows. He teaches ten different levels of tap class along with his other faculty responsibilities at Oklahoma City University, where many students are drawn to the comprehensive dance program.

“I had to break everything down to figure out how and why it worked,” explains Reed, so he’s especially adept at identifying a student’s problem with the dance, and then piece-by-piece, sequentially building the skill and confidence to overcome the challenge. “Listen,” he demands of a level IV class, giving them the key to monitoring their own rhythm and matching the music. He points out that the sophisticated ear-training that enables a conductor or a tap teacher to hear a single instrument within a whole chorus begins with paying attention to the sound, and learning to differentiate the clean and clear from the flawed tones.

Part of that breaking down to understand gave Reed an awareness that tap was as much a heritage as it is a dance, and so he formed the St. Louis Tap Festival to foster an awareness of the legacy of hoofers and to make a vehicle for sharing the culture of tap.

“It’s hands on,” he says, describing the festival. “There are no ‘I’m the only game in town’-ers. Only teachers who take an interest in working with and being with the dancers are invited to be part of it. The festival brings together all different personal styles. Styles differ and they change, but we’re not jealous of or in fear of each other. When a person really knows, there’s no fear, no jealousy.”

“We police one another,” he says, “and share standards. Yes, there are tap standards. You have to say something with your sound, be musical, clean, dynamic and rhythmically shaded. If a dancer shows you something, you may compliment him by saying how good that was, and maybe you’ll try it and add your own thing. But if it isn’t good,” Reed explains, “you say ‘What was that?’ and ‘Why are you doing that that way?’ or ‘That doesn’t seem right’. It’s an individualized art form and anybody can do it—just some better than others.”

“ ‘Just nudge a little,’ is what Jimmy Slyde says about teaching. It’s all really an education process,” adds Reed.

But learning isn’t just in the studio, panel discussions, or even in the professional performance at the end. “We make time to talk, to hang out together, the elder and younger teachers and all the students who come,” says Reed as he warms to his subject. “It’s about getting to know the elders and how they practice their art form, how their art kept them alive—how they see themselves as artists, what it’s like to be an artist, a musician, a dancer, why things are done in a certain way, where traditions begin. It’s about life, about a feel, about a history, about a tradition—not just about being proficient at steps.”

Reed’s Tap Heritage Institute is also about promoting the community of tap, what keeps it together, what moves it forward, its history and philosophy. “A relationship is a lot of little things and times. It’s like warming up someone’s cold hands—this passing on a legacy,” he reflects. “We should all live life in rhythm. Everything in life has a rhythm. Get in the rhythm of life,” he advises.

For more on the St. Louis Tap Festival, July 25–30, go to www.tapheritage.com. Tap Jam is for everyone; Friday is a student showcase; Saturday is a professional performance on campus at the University of Missouri.

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