Heart and sole: Tap dance extravaganza pays tribute to fleet feet

By Diana Nollen

“Thank You, Gregory” taps into an evolutionary American art form that sprang from the slave trade, morphed through the melting pot of New York City and found glitz and glamour in Hollywood.

Through all of its many incarnations, rhythm has remained its constant.

The fancy footwork of entertainment tappers past and present will spring to life Saturday as Hancher presents “Thank You, Gregory: A Tribute to the Legends of Tap” at City High School in Iowa City.

The name pays homage to the late Gregory Hines, tap's modern ambassador.

“We're thanking him for being a bridge between the old guard and the contemporary, experimenting with all kinds of tap dance,” says Tony Waag, 52, of New York City, the show's creator. He's also the artistic director and co-founder of the American Tap Dance Foundation, known as the American Tap Dance Orchestra when it came to Hancher in March 1994.

“Thank You, Gregory” was created about five years ago, after Hines died from cancer in 2003. It's been retooled and remounted in the past year as a work in progress.

“It's designed for different people to come in and out of it,” Waag says. “Maurice Hines performed in the first week of this time around, which was very interesting and appropriate. He has such great love and respect for his brother that we lost, and brought a personal moment” to the show.

The work was developed in pieces, rehearsed in New York, then staged in Philadelphia before hitting the road. The production features musicians and dancers with impressive resumes from stage, screen and music videos for such pop stars as Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez. 

“The show is multimedia,” Waag says, “because there has been so much of tap dance expressed or preserved on film. I tried to put a lot of that in. Some of it is kind of rare footage.

“Certainly we're trying to point out there are so many styles, mixed together with singing. Gregory was a great singer, dancer, actor, entertainer. I personally love song and dance, so I thought that was important. ... We're trying to take people's limited perception of tap dance and move it forward, so 60 percent of the show is much more contemporary or trying to do new interpretations.”

Pieces range from tapping to Beyonce and the Beatles' “Eleanor Rigby” to a women's blues number and a song-and-dance Waag choreographed, featuring roller skates and ukulele.

He hopes audiences come away with “more knowledge about the art form and how incredible Gregory Hines was - how incredible all these tap dancers were,” Waag says. “What an amazing thing to be proud of as an American; it's an American art form.

“I've seen people go, ‘Wow! I had no idea there were so many different types of tap dance.'”

Various dance history sources trace tap back to the Deep South, when slave owners forbade slaves to play the drumbeats they used for communication in Africa. To preserve those traditions, the slaves translated those rhythms to their feet.

“That a pretty common idea,” Waag says. “I've heard that from a number of sources. It's a little more complicated than that, but there's definitely an African influence in tap dance because of the rhythms.”

As freed slaves made their way to New York, they lived in the ghettos with Irish immigrants, where their dance styles mingled.

“There's only so many things you can do with your feet,” Waag says. “Any time there's jumping around and making noise with your feet, you can add to that step dancing, Indian (percussive dancing) ... certainly the flamenco, Appalachian clog and you can even throw a Mexican hat dance in there if you want.

“Tap dancers consider themselves musicians as well as dancers, with crossovers in all kinds of different ways. Musically, interpretively, it's certainly very complex.”

 FAST TAKE

What: Hancher presents “Thank You, Gregory: A Tribute to the Legends of Tap”

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 23

Where: Opstad Auditorium, City High School, 1900 Morningside Dr., Iowa City

Tickets: $10 to $40 through Hancher Box Office in Old Capitol Mall, (319) 335-1160 or 1-(800) HANCHER or www.hancher.uiowa.edu

Information: www.elsieman.org/artists/thank_you_gregory.html