DeAngelo Dance

"I know you say you are musicians - instruments - but when you walk out on stage I see a person, not a piano or a horn. You are performers in a theater. Respect the fact that an audience pays not just to hear you tap, but to see you share who your are...." As long as people are performing in a theatrical setting the goal is to entertain an audience, engage them, be there to serve them.

“Its a road to nowhere”, a famous theater personality said about Tap. I saw the truth in the comment as I ventured into my experience with that community. I was determined to get eclecticism, diversity and performance out of the show I was working on - Thank You, Gregory is.

Now, the show is not “about” Gregory Hines, but honoring what he did for the tap community - his openness as an artist, his respect for history, his influences and how that effected the future of tap. After much viewing, I actually could not see the progress following the doors he opened. There was in the ’80’s a successful Broadway show - The Tap Dance Kid where the young Savion Glover learned choreography from Danny Daniels and his son Danny Giagni. Savion went on to create Noise/Funk but brilliant as he is, offered little to his work that was meant to engage an audience since. With eyes to the floor, his type of performance, it seems, could happen with or without an audience, and his influence is wide-spread over the current community. I find that his influence is more felt today......then that of the great potential of tap as a performing art genre, that Gregory did further, that could - if followed - have greater influence and longevity now.