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• Baakari Wilder

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1976-
Birth Date: Dec 1, 1976

Place of Birth: Washington, D.C.

Baakari Wilder, tap dancer, teacher, and choreographer who is regarded as a leader of his generation's cutting-edge dancers, was born in Washington, D.C. His mother, Beverly Wilder, was a teacher; his father, Belton Wilder, was a psychologist. At the age of three, his mother sent him to a community center where he studied a number of the arts. His first memories of seeing tap dance was watching such Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson films as Little Colonel (1935) and The Littlest Rebel (1936). Then, at the age of twelve, when Gregory Hines came to teach a master class at Wilder's dance studio in Bethesda, Maryland, Wilder was caught up in the larger fabric of tap dance. It was not just about the steps and rhythms Hines was showing but, said Wilder, "in the way he showed a lot of love to the people in the audience . . . wherever he went, he embraced everybody." From Hines, Wilder received his first important lessons in tap: "By imitating, just to try to feel the vibe and beat, from watching him, I tried out his steps, his swagger and his coolness . . . Gregory had a powerful rhythmic language; it was strong and cool and masculine. I had grown up with ladies; this was a positive way to see a young man and see how he got it off, how he was open." Slowly, the need in Wilder to do tap as an expressive art form emerged as greater than it being a recreation. He began to dig more deeply; becoming more involved in the history of the dance and focusing on its rhythmic aspects. He attended a magnet high school with accelerated classes in ballet, jazz, and tap and studied with Renee Kreithen and Yvonne Edwards, joining their Washington, D.C. troupe Tappers With Attitude. In 1991, Wilder went to his first tap festival in Boulder, Colorado, where he continued his rhythmic explorations with Jimmy Slyde, Eddie Brown, Honi Coles, Cholly Atkins, and Brenda Bufalino. In 1994, he performed with the American Tap Dance Orchestra while enrolled as a freshman in the undergraduate Acting Program at New York University. One year later, he was cast in the original production of Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, which premiered at the New York's Public Theater; he became the replacement for Glover, in the role of ‘Da Beat, when the show moved Broadway.

Wilder's talent lies in his rhythmic versatility. He can be boot-stomping loud and funky, as he was in Noise/Funk's "Industrialization" number. So can he be nuanced and understated in his approach to rhythm dance, as when he performed Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood," in his tribute to Bunny Briggs, who was inducted into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame at the 2006 New York City Tap Festival. In that number, Wilder was an incarnation of the great bebop-rhythm dancer who performed it in Black and Blue on Broadway in 1989. Hovering over the floor with a wash of sixteenth notes, he displayed a supreme restraint in his splashing patter of taps that launched him into Briggs's signature heel-and-toe paddling across the floor. In one chorus, he assiduously fused his own emphatic flat-footed style with Briggs's rippling bop-inflected beats, demonstrating (to his hard-hitting young male peers) the full spectrum of rhythmic expressivity.

In 2000, Wilder appeared in the Spike Lee-directed film Bamboozled in the role of Pickanniny Sambo, That same year, after performing in The Beat at New York's Universal Art's Context Studio, one critic remarked: "Baakari Wilder works his usual magic in a few sadly abbreviated tap numbers. The buttery flow, deep articulation, and subtle accents of his footwork are too often overwhelmed by the rest of the stage action. There is more truth in the gaggling, comical droop of Mr. Wilder's torso than in anything else in the show."

In 2002, Wilder was featured dancer in T.A.P.P. (The Art and Appreciation of Percussion) at Swing 46 jazz club in New York. As a jazz tap dancer, he has appeared in Honi Coles' Memorial Tribute, Jazz Tap, and Savion Glover & Friends; he has also shown his versatility as an actor with performances at Folger's Shakespeare Theater and at Bowie State University. On television, Wilder has made several appearances as a dancer on Jazz Central on BET, and with Savion Glover on BRAVO. He has also evolved into a superb master tap teacher and mentor, teaching in tap dance studios in New York and Washington, D.C. In 2010, Wilder was honored at the second annual D.C. Tap Festival, thanking his audience with a tap solo to the Sonny Rollin's classic "St. Thomas."

It is to Savion Glover that Wilder attributes that capacity for rhythmic inclusiveness. "Until Savion, I could not begin to appreciate steps . . . I am very serious about what I am doing with my feet, to get the sound. For me, it's exploring how to make it fluid. For me, rhythmically, it's an even more fluid approach, having to do with balance. I understand I touch people, but for me, personally, I'm still going through it. I want to figure out how to keep growing. I want to challenge what I feel comfortable with. Spirituality is where I get my confidence."

[Source: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]