Sue's Leg/Remembering the Thirties Tharp, Twyla performer Robinson, Bill "Bojangles" performer Television/Video 1976-03-24 Dance in America series , the first to produce quality dance on film with documentary film footage of dancing in the thirties, followed by choreography by Twyla Tharp, "Sue's Leg." Many references to vernacular dance sources that inspired Tharp's choreographic style. "The Tharp program was an example of a brilliant concept that misfired. The idea was to start off with a collage of film clips about jazz dance and social dance of the late 1930s and 1940s, and to show how Tharp's work is a distillation of these styles. Unfortunately, the minute Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was seen stepping out of a car to do a tap dance on the roadway, Tharp was dead. The real thing was so much better that the so-called distillation turned out to be a trivialization of the significant. To hear Fats Waller singing "Ain't Misbehavin'" with its undertone of pain, and then to see the Tharp dancers cavorting to the same music, was an unfortunate juxtaposition and said something disturbing about her works." (Anna Kisselgoff, "How Dance Conquered the TV Screen" New York Times 30 May 1976, 49) Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (biography) loc.music.tdabio.154 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.2228