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June Taylor [biography]
Dates: 1917-2004
Birth Date: Dec 4, 1917
Death Date: May 16, 2004
Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois
Place of Death: Miami, Florida
June Taylor, dancer and choreographer who has been hailed as the First Lady of Tap Television, began taking dance classes at the age of eight, and by age fourteen lied about her age to become one of the dancers at the Chicago nightclub Chez Paree. By age nineteen, she was touring the United States and Europe as a dancer in various nightclubs. In 1938, in the midst of a fruitful career as a dancer, she became ill with tuberculosis and spent the next two years in a sanitarium. When she emerged, she took up choreography and in 1942 founded her own troupe, the June Taylor Dancers, which made their first appearance at Chicago's Blackhawk Restaurant. In 1948 her troupe of six original dancers made its television debut as The Toastettes on The Toast of the Town, hosted by Ed Sullivan, thus bringing the chorus line to television. Two years later, Taylor joined Jackie Gleason's television musical Cavalcade of Stars, and then went along with him and a sixteen-member chorus to The Jackie Gleason Show, where her signature camera shot became the overhead kaleidoscopic Busby Berkeley-type view of the dancers making geometric patterns. If the high-kicking, smiling routines that formed the first three minutes of each broadcast were Broadway-based and reminiscent of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, Taylor's dancers were multiple-skilled, versatile, and rigorously- trained precision line dancers. They did tap and high kicks, as well as ballet. Taylor, who in addition to choreographing all the routines insisted on directing how they were to be shot in the studio, often had to battle with the cameramen on the set to make sure the camera angles be both photogenic of the women's legs and enhancing of the precision work that was rigorously drilled.
The 1952 fall premier of The Jackie Gleason Show opened with the entire cast bustling in a behind-the-scenes preparation; from the chaos there emerged the zigzag line of the June Taylor Dancers singing "CBS welcomes you to a great new fall debut." The chorus of sixteen girls in very short skirts and with gorgeous curvaceous legs formed a kick-line that slashed a thick horizontal across the TV screen; then girl number eight and nine broke the line by moving downstage, turning into a V formation, to visually announce the entrance of Jackie Gleason. In 1955, Taylor won an Emmy Award for her choreography. In 1963, Mercedes Ellington, granddaughter of Duke Ellington, joined the troupe as its first African-American dancer. In 1965, male performers were added to the troupe. From its premier in 1952 to its last telecast in 1970, The Jackie Gleason Show showcased tap dancing; and tap-based routines by the June Taylor Dancers. Each Gleason show opened with a montage sequence of the women, posing framed by a certain situation or visual motif, and continued with specialty dance numbers, ending with a high-kicking tap chorus line. These performances were strictly proscenium stage for the live audience, but it was customary for there to be several birds-eye shots of the dancers' bodies as they appeared in different patterns, reminiscent of Busby Berkley's arrangements.
Because these were entertainment shows that were directed towards engaging the audience on a visual level, the choreography was dominated by visual patterns that were achieved through costuming, arrangement, and camera angles. The routines were centered upon one theme, whether the dancers were dressed in bikinis and towels, raincoats and umbrellas or costumed as lambs or as Santa Clauses. The tapping was fairly show-business-esque, with medium paced footwork. The footwork was relatively simple, not many kicks or jumping. It was common that the dancers would travel spatially only forward and backward. In several routines, movements were appropriated from Spanish, salsa, and flamenco-style movements combined with tapping. The performance consisted of collective and group choreography, with no solos. At the end of every show the dancers would line up and do the rockets kick, ultimately proving the choreography's underlying allegiance to the entertainment aspects of the show, as well as to the main character and event of the show, Jackie Gleason himself.
Taylor, as choreographer, and Gleason as composer, also worked together to produce the 1953 television ballet Tawny. In 1978, after moving to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when Gleason moved his shows from New York to Miami Beach, Taylor began choreographing for the Miami Dolphins cheer-leading squad, the Dolphin Starbrites, who were famous for their one-piece bathing suits and go-go boots, as well as performing precision chorus-line routines at half-time. Taylor served in that capacity until 1990.
[Source: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, a Cultural History (2010]