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• Ayodele Casel

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1975-
Birth Date: Jun 5, 1975

Place of Birth: Bronx, NY

Ayodele Casel, tap dancer, choreographer, and teacher noted for representing the new generation of high-heeled and low-heeled women in tap, was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1975, and of Puerto Rican heritage. Raised by her mother, Aida Tirado, her father, Tayari Casel, was a renowned martial artist from Chicago. She spent her formative years in Rincon, Puerto Rico, where she attended school from fourth to ninth grade. There, listening to the Puerto Rican Salsa orchestra El Gran Combo and singers Hector LaVoe and Celia Cruz, her rhythmic sensibilities were etched by the music of Salsa-- a mixture of Spanish and African music based on the son, and Afro-Cuban Latin jazz, which includes meringue, songo, son, mambo, Timba, bolero, charanga, and cha cha cha. She returned to New York City in 1990 and in the Fall of 1995, in her sophomore year in the Undergraduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she begin the study of tap dance with Charles Goddertz. One year later, she met and befriended Baakari Wilder, an undergraduate theatre major at NYU who was also a principal dancer in Savion Glover's Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, which had opened at the Public Theatre and was being prepared for its Broadway opening.

Wilder began showing Casel tap steps in the NYU dorms and took her to tap jams at Fazils and the Lower East Side club Deanna's, where she met Roxane Butterfly, Max Pollak, and Herbin Van Cayseele (Tamango) and learned to improvise. Wilder then recommended she study with American Tap Dance Orchestra principal dancer Barbara Duffy, whose class consisted of professional tap dancers." Wilder also introduced Casel to Savion Glover, backstage at the Ambassador Theatre when Noise/Funk moved to Broadway. Glover continued to hear about the young female dancer hanging with the guys backstage and learning the choreography. Then he saw her dance one night, at the Nuyorican Poets Café (the New York Puerto Rican performance space at 236 East 3rd Street), where she was one of only a very few women who would get up and jam. Impressed with her tap dancing, Glover invited Casel to a taping of a performance that would serve as the opening credits to the 1997 ABC-TV Monday Night Football, a live television broadcast of the National Football League. Glover then invited Casel to be the only female dancer in his fledgling company Not Your Ordinary Tappers (NYOT). In a performance with the company in Savion Glover/Downtown, Casel was the first woman to be partnered by Glover in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers' styled "Cheek to Cheek." But it was her own solo, set to a tango with original music arranged by the band, that showed her off as a rhythm-savvy soloist. For the next two years, Casel continued to perform with Glover and the NYOTs-- at Carnegie Hall in a tribute to the Nicholas Brothers (6 April 1998; on the television special In Performance at the White House (16 September 1998, PBS-TV); and at Radio City Music Hall.

In 1999, she set out on her own when she starred in and directed three sold-out tap concerts of !Ayo! (February 1999, Triad Theatre on 72nd Street), tap dancing with a Latin band that included Joe Medina (violin), Sammy Galvez (flute and vocals), Gil Suarez (piano), James Guevarez (timbales), Danny Del Valle (congas, vocals), Edward Iglesias (trombone), and Wilson Aponte (vocals and small percussions). With special guests that included the poet Shihan and tap dancers Jason Samuels Smith and Jason Bernard, they performed selections from a repertory that included such popular and original tunes as "Hay Que Saber Comenzar," "El Paso De Encarnacion," "El Baile Del Suavito," and the classic danson tune "Almendre." She continued with sold-out performances of AYO! at the Triad and Joe's Pub (May 2000). In 1996 Casel was a soloist in Derick Grant's tap extravaganza Imagine Tap!, which opened in Chicago's Harris Theatre. She continued a career as a soloist, in 2007 she starred in Rob Kapilow's tap dance concerto entitled Paddywack: A Tap Dance Concerto" performed at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. In 1999, she appeared in The Rodgers & Hart documentary film Thou Swell, Thou Witty, as well as performing in Roxane Butterfly's Beauteez ‘N the Beat at The Supper Club in New York. She also performed in T.A.P.P. - The Art and Appreciation of Percussion (2000), with the Jazz Tap Ensemble at the Joyce Theatre (2005), in Hank Smith's The Story of Tap: Sequel (2005), and in the premiere of Jason Samuels Smith's Charlie's Angels (2006) at Chicago's Harris Theatre. In 2006, Casel produced Tappy Holidays, the first of many Christmas tap shows at New York's Symphony Space, co-directed wioth Sarah Savelli. Casel continues to be a much in demand soloist and teacher of rhythm tap.S

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