Philadelphia Tappers
This list is by no means all-inclusive...- Audrey Bookspan
- Robert Burden
- Arthur Leo Taylor
- Germaine Ingram
- Henry Meadows and
- Pete Briglia
- LaVaughn Robinson
- Karen Vorkapich
Audrey Bookspan
Audrey Bookspan began dancing in Brooklyn at age three and hercareer has included dancing,teaching and choreography. A restless interest in dance in all its forms has led her to study modern, ballet, jazz, tap, African, Flamenco as well as movement therapy. She has also taught and performed the circus arts - juggling, clowning and mime. She has assisted elementary school teachers who wish to incorporate dance or the circus arts into their classes. She also deals with the multicultural aspects of dance. Her teachers include Martha Graham, Louis Horst, Pearl Primus, Arthur Hall, LaVaughn Robinson, Julia Lopez and Meira. She currently teaches tap in Cheltenham. Phone: (215) 233-0708 [Audrey was my second teacher who introduced me to "paddles."]
Robert Burden
Robert F. Burden, Jr. was a street dancer, house dancer and party dancer before attending the University of the Arts. After a year of school, he moved to Florida, danced for Disney World and started a break dance group. He earned enough money to return to school. Back at the University of the Arts, he met LaVaughn Robinson, who he eventuallly worked with for four years. Burden recalls that it took him six or seven months to get a tiem step and other basics down to where he could study with Robinson. Burden has performed in 42nd Street at Phila.'s Riverfront Dinner Theater, and for Young Audiences. He received an IPAP grant from the Community Education Center (CEC) to experiment with creating stories set to tap. This led to his production of CyndiElla at CEC and the Painted Bride. Robert explains,
...When people listen to music they can sometimes be taken to new places, and the music provides the atmosphere for that transformation. This is what I do when I play my feet - the music and the dancing become one and the same. The form follows the function of the sound. I create different patterns influenced by rhythms from Africa, Brazil, Hip-Hop and the big Band era and use my dancers as you would use the different instruments in a band. I use fairy tales to emphasize the story that my feet are telling and that incorporate my percussionist style of tap with creating a character.
Exploring how to use tap as a form of music that is heard, Robert has used tap boards to produce different pitches, and is premiering a piece using these boards at the Williamstown Grand Theater in New Jersey.
Arthur Leo Taylor
Arthur Leo Taylor is a graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia earning a BFA in acting after attending the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. He performs and teaches jazz, tap, modern and hip-hop and has performed in numerous stage productions regionally. He cofounded Tap Team Two with Robert Burden.
Tap Team Two
Tap Team Two was formed in 1988 by Arthur Taylor and Robert Burden. The duo uses "street" tap better known as "hoofing" as their base of choreography patterned after the Nicholas Brothers' tap percussionist style. Tap Team Two has appeared in Phila., New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. performing for Young Audiences (a non-profit organization presenting professional performing arts programs to students), CIGNA Corporation and Special Arts and Education. [Notes from March, 1994 CyndiElla program.]
Germaine Ingram
Germaine Ingram began intensive study with master tap dancer LaVaughn Robinson in 1980. In 1984 she began performing with Robinson in a trio known as "The Philadelphia Tap Dancers." She and Robinson became a duo in 1988 (shown in image above.)
Ingram has performed in concerts and festivals across the United States as well as in Europe. Her engagements include Dance Place and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, the Great Tap Reunion in Boston Massachusetts, the Colorado Dance Festival and the 1991 tribute to Steve Condos in Lyon, France. In 1987 she performed in Toulon, France at the National Festival of Dance and Film. She and Robinson appeared in the Emmy-Award winning television special, "Gregory Hines' Tap Dance in America," where they were dubbed "the fastest taps in the business."
Ingram has taught tap in workshops in the U.S. and Europe and to dance and theater majors at Philadelphia's University of the Arts. She has choreographed for musical theater, as well as for her ensemble with Robinson. In 1993 she was commissioned to create a piece for the New York company Manhattan Tap.
Before turning her focus to tap, Ingram studied and performed with mime Pierre Trombert. She has practiced civil rights and labor law in Philadelphia since 1971, including an eight year stint with Community Legal Services. Her community activism was recognized in 1992 by the Bread and Roses Community Fund with The Polly Brinley Outstanding Volunteerism Award.
(Germaine is shown here with Edith "Baby Edwards" Hunt, one of the master women tappers of Philadelphia. They are preparing for a Phila. tap retrospective "Stepping In Time," a sold-out three show performance at the Arts Bank in Philadelphia located at Broad and South Streets on Feb. 4 and 5, 1995. Note: Broad and South was the pinnacle corner during the street challenge days of master Phila. tapper LaVaughn Robinson.)
[Comment: The above biographical notes were from the LaVaughn Robinson tribute program notes (May 1, 1993.) I attended the show. Germaine is a great tap dancer. At one point in the show she took the microphone and began to sing. Man! Can this woman sing! I was very pleasantly surprised. ...Paul Corr]
Henry Meadows
[Henry Meadows, shown here with Pete Briglia, recently passed on. His memory and impact are still felt in the Philadelphia tap community.]
Henry Meadows' mother Ethel instilled in him an appreciation of the arts from the time he was a small child. She took him to theaters and shows where he saw Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and other contemporary jazz artists. Meadows' mother was also his first tutor in the essentials of dance and tap. She taught him in the spirit of fun, probably never imagining that he would eventually become a tap star.
Henry's sister Bernice ("Penny") was another important influence on his early interest in the performing arts. She grew up alongside Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald. Her talents were well recognized and her career as a professional jazz singer was successful. Henry's sister checked regularly to see what new steps and moves he had learned since she had last seen him. She helped him to refine points and develop a unique style.
Meadows, 69, grew up in South Philadelphia near 17th and Fitzwater Street, where many of Philadelphia's future tap stars were his schoolmates, including the Nicholas brothers and LaVaughn Robinson. Harold Nicholas was in Henry's third grade class at the E.M. Stanton school and later at Audenried High School. Meadows teamed up with other young tappers and began busking on street corners on Friday and Saturday nights.
As Henry grew older and began performing in professional theaters, he was faced with the challenge of developing his own style. When he started out, he was just doing rhythm. During the 1940's he was introduced to a new tap style that fundamentally changed his own. While travelling in an army show he met Darby Hicks, who was a genius at "paddling". Hicks started out in Chicago with a group called The Esquires, and was well known for his flamboyant flips, spins and other athletic maneuvers. The paddling style was new to Henry but it fascinated him, and soon he and Hicks developed an act as a duo that was included in the travelling show. Paddling is a carefully controlled form of continuous tapping that rolls out like sheets of rain and can "tell a beautiful story if you do it right," notes Meadows.
Henry Meadows began dancing with LaVaughn Robinson when they were teenagers. They talked about the idea in their neighborhood around 17th and South, started trying out a few things, and developed an act. Penny's manager then helped them make the move from dancing in the streets to the professional stage.
Meadows and Robinson danced together at most of the great performance theaters of the era. Meadows recalls performing at the beautiful Earle Theater at 11 th and Market during its final two weeks of operation in 1946. Henry Meadows and LaVaughn Robinson's last performance together as a duo was in the 1950's. They had just played the Palace Theater in New York when Henry decided to call it quits.
Pete Briglia
Pete Briglia wanted to meet Henry Meadows in 1984. As a student of LaVaughn Robinson, he had often heard about the "Grandaddy of Paddling in Philadelphia. In 1984 they began a dance partnership that continues to this day. Together they have revived part of the act Meadows and Robinson devised thirty years earlier. Meadows wants Pete to pick up all the little tricks and moves he and Robinson designed. More importantly, he says, he wants Pete to be able to use these skills and create something new and unique. This ability, he points out, was the greatest lesson show business taught him.
A general contractor by profession, native Philadelphian Pete Briglia started dancing comparatively late in life. Pete was in his 30's when his mother signed up for a tap class at the Mid-City YWCA. He stopped by one day and was invited by the teacher to take the class. One thing led to another and his interest grew. He took class off and on around town, finally leading him to a course taught by LaVaughn Robinson at PCPA (now the University of the Arts). LaVaughn inspired him to take tap more seriously.
One Christmas LaVaughn brought in an old publicity photo Henry Meadows had made into Christmas card. Intrigued by LaVaughn's stories about Henry, Pete went to meet him. Over time, their friendship grew and Henry regaled Pete with stories of the old days. Though he had never seen Pete dance, Henry asked him to work as his partner. Pete describes the beginning of their partnership this way: "Henry is the consummate dancer. Here I come along, I'd only been dancing for a short time. He took me on as a raw recruit. It took him a lot of work to get me into shape. Some of our earl ~erformances were pretty rocky. We've been dancing now for 10 years."
Hearing ~Henry's stories about the past saddens Pete because he sees how much show business has changed for the worse. At the same time, he is committed to keeping the art form alive. "Henry always said that to dance with someone there has to be an element of character present, you have to be on the same page. I think that gave him the incentive to continue with me," says Briglia. [Comment: The above biographical notes were from the LaVaughn Robinson tribute program notes (May 1, 1993.)]
LaVaughn Robinson
LaVaughn Robinson's dance career began on a linoleum floor in the shed kitchen of the family's South Philadelphia row home. From the age of seven, he continued to learn steps from most of the region's talented tap dancers. Teddy Hale and Bill Bailey are mentors that LaVaughn readily acknowledges. At age 66, LaVaughn Robinson is a master of styles, gleaned from a long line of tap dancers before him.
"You could walk down South Street in those days," LaVaughn recalls, "and meet up with the best dancers in the city. As a youngster I put my steps to good use performing for change on the streets of downtown and South Philadelphia." Either he danced a capella (without instrumental accompaniment) or he'd find a washboard and tin tub accompanist to lay down some good rhythms. Whenever Bill Bailey was in town performing at the Latin Casino (a nightclub that once graced the corner of Walnut Street between Thirteenth and Broad Streets), he would bring LaVaughn and the other kid tap dancers inside and let them watch his show. "Sometimes, he came outside and watched our show," LaVaughn now remembers. "We used to sit in his dressing room, while he talked to us about being 'good'. His father was a reverend, you know, and Bill thought tap dancing was very spiritual. He believed you had to be'right' to dance. He was a big influence on my dancing, " says Robinson.
From "buskin'" (entertaining by singing or dancing on the streets for money), LaVaughn earned from $35 to $40 a day. South Street was a thriving business and entertainment district in the 1930's and '40's and people enjoyed the novelty of watching young men exhibit new steps. LaVaughn and the friends he danced with knew their market. Center City and South Street was their "turf." "We used to call it 'going to work'," LaVaughn notes. "During New Year's, the Army/Navy game and holidays Philadelphia tap dancers were invited up to rooftops for parties. I had my regular route, says LaVaughn, " which included spots like Palumbo's and the Two Bit Club.
LaVaughn was featured in his first professional performance in 1945. Over the years, he has shared the stage with Cab Calloway, Tommy Dorsey, Maynard Ferguson, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker. LaVaughn actively pursued his dance career through 1972. By then, nightclub venues which were a mainstay of most tap dancers'employment opportunities had become nearly extinct and highly electrified music became more popular.
Contemporary dance and folk audiences were the first to acknowledge LaVaughn's artistry in the late 1970's. As a dancer, he projects exuberance and an uncanny ability to convince every audience member that they have had an intimate conversation with this walking cultural icon. As general appreciation and interest in tap have revived over the past twenty years, LaVaughn has kept up a busy schedule teaching and performing in the United States and abroad. LaVaughn and dance partner Germaine Ingram appeared in the PBS tap special, "Gregory Hines'Tap Dance in America." The talent and legacy LaVaughn shares have been recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts program.
[Comment: The above biographical notes and photo were taken from the program for a LaVaughn Robinson tribute evening at Philadelphia's Painted Bride Art Center on May 1, 1993.]
Other Information
LaVaughn is featured in one of the chapters of Rusty Frank's book "Tap! The Greatest Tap Stars and Their Stories." In that chapter he elaborates on the street corner competitions in Philadelphia. Apparently, the corners along South Street had a heirarchy with Broad and South being the pinnacle. Corners dropped in competitive desirability as one moved East or West from Broad Street. If you couldn't cut it at a particular corner you slinked away to hone your steps on another corner.
Return to top of pageKaren Vorkapich
Karen Vorkapich has quietly established a solid reputation within Philadelphia dance circles as one of the city's most talented young artists in her idiom. Active on the Phila. dance scene since 1974, Karen is a noted teacher and performer of tap, jazz, and folk dance. "I was born in Gary, Indiana. My mom sent me to dancing school when I was 5 because I had a lot of energy and was jumping on all of the furniture in the house. When I was 10, we got a television set and I was inspired by the dancers I saw in television programs. At dancing school, I studied tap, jazz, ballet, acrobatics and baton twirling. Later in my life I discovered folk dancing. When I came to Philadelphia I learned clogging and was fortunate to meet LaVaughn Robinson. LaVaughn inspired me to aspire to great heights in tap dance."
[Comment: These biographical notes were taken from the program for a LaVaughn Robinson tribute evening at Philadelphia's Painted Bride Art Center on May 1, 1993. Karen teaches in the West Philadelphia area.]