The
Depression's Back (& So is Tap)
Goldberg, Jane
performer
Collins, Leon
performer
Coles, Marion
performer
Safford, Sarah
performer
Wasser, Beverly
performer
Cook, Charles "Cookie"
performer
Concert
1983-05-11
Theater of the Riverside Church
May 11, 13, 15, 1983, performed in rotation with Jerry Ames' Tap Company during the Riverside Dance Festival and Tap Week at Theatre of Riverside Church.
Featuring Jane Goldberg and Charles Cookie Cook with special guest Hoofers Leon Collins and Marion Coles; Music by Montego Joe (congas), Richard Reiter (reeds), Jim Roberts (piano) and the Changing Times Dancers Sarah Safford and Beverly Wasser.
Conceived, written and choreographed by Jane Goldberg about the first tap dancers on the moon. The Big Bucks tap company vs. Transcendental Tap with guru Leon Collins.
Contains traditional jazz tap as well as rapping-tapping dialogues.
Goldberg, Coles and Cook play the big-bucks-crass-venturers doing depression songs, thriving on commercialism, nostalgia, depressed times which are good for tap dancers; Safford and Wasser are the transcendentalists, the art tap--the classical music, the purists. Both groups compete to be the first tap dancers on the new Holiday Inn on the moon.
Mr. Collins, in this work, did a solo to a Bach prelude and fugue; Mr. Collins also tapped to Suppé's "Poet and Peasant Overture" and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." At times, his tapping accentuated the rhythm of the scores; at other times, like the improvisations of a jazz musicians or the trills and ornaments that a soloist may add to the cadenzas of a Baroque concerto, his tapping went off on fantastic obligatos of its own. And when, without pause, the "Flight of the Bumblebee" gave way to "Begin the Beguine" that was a reminder that all sorts of music and dance can swing.
(Jack Anderson, "Tap Makes Everyone Want to Dance" New York Times June 5, 1983, H6).
Performing Arts Encyclopedia
http://www.loc.gov/performingarts
Tap Dance America
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html
Charles "Cookie" Cook (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.58
Sarah Safford (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.166
Marion Coles (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.54
Leon Collins (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.55
Jane Goldberg (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.99
tda
IHAS
151216
loc.music.tda.2422