What killed tap," Ed Terry told a bunch of hoofer enthusiasts last Sunday, "was the invention of television."
Tomorrow night, Terry will do his best to revive tap. But that statement's not completely true. Tap never really died, thanks to people like Terry.
Terry teaches tap dancing at the Flair Dance and Modeling Studio, a 40-year-old business run by Willia Bland and her daughter, Andrea Bland Travis. Last Sunday, on National Tap Dance Day, Terry gave a brief history of tap, along with some fundamentals of the dance form, at the School 33 Arts Center on Light Street. Exactly one week later, eight dancers Terry teaches at Flair will appear in A Night at the Cotton Club, a show celebrating the 100th birthday of Cab Calloway.
Terry's the dance director for the show, which is sponsored by the Black-Jewish Forum of Baltimore, better known as BLEWS. (Hey, it was either BLEWS or JACKS, and my money's betting that the people who formed the organization back in 1978 went with the better name.)
The main attraction for A Night at the Cotton Club will be the Cab Calloway Orchestra, now led by Mr. Hi De Ho's grandson, C. Calloway Brooks. According to a flier posted on the BLEWS Web site, there will be a special appearance by a group called Klezzazz, which will perform "Yiddish blues with a Mobtown twist."
But the real treat will be those tappers from Flair, who gave a brief demonstration of what they can do at the School 33 Arts Center earlier this week. Seven of the dancers are teens who attend schools in the Baltimore area. In keeping with my new policy of giving props to achieving students, their names are: Brion Armstrong, Devante Barnes, Herbert Jenkins, his sister Christine Jenkins, Brittany Ballentine, Morgan Thomas and Christine Wyatt. Christine Jenkins recently won an NAACP ACT-SO award for ballet.
The eighth dancer? She's not a teen. She's 23-year-old Mari Andrea Travis. Yes, she is the daughter of Andrea Bland Travis and the granddaughter of Willia Bland. Mari Travis is a 2007 graduate of Morgan State University and will attend grad school at American University this fall.
A Night at the Cotton Club will be performed at the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in the 7400 block of Park Heights Ave. (Those of you tempted to make the joke "the shortest distance between Israel and Africa is Park Heights Avenue" please contain yourselves.) The show starts at 7 p.m., and tickets go for $100 if you're a VIP and 45 bucks if you're a regular Joe. (I guess I don't have to tell you what ticket Greg the Cheapskate bought.)
