This year's Harlem Jazz Dance Festival takes place June 13-16 sponsored by the American Institute of Vernacular Jazz Dance. It features many events and dance styles, including the much loved art of tap. Jimmy Slyde, one of the world's greatest tap masters, whose career in clubs, on stage and film spans six decades, will be performing and also mentoring young dancers. 

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Slyde about what makes tap beautiful. He'd just appeared in Tap Extravaganza 2003 with star performers of all ages, including 87-year-old Ernest "Brownie" Brown, the all-female tap company Rhythm ISS, Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughlin, Brenda Bufalino and Savion Glover. I told him I learned from Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the American poet and educator Eli Siegel, that: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." This led to lively and deeply informative onversation! 

Jimmy Slyde Dancing Photo: Carolina Kroon

A tap dancer is also a musician, a percussionist. "Tap dancers," Mr. Slyde explained, "are concerned with wood as part of their tonations. They make their own sound. I rely on myself to make my sound with a wood surface and when I put my metal on it, I get a different tone." I commented, "As you're talking I see a deep connection between the opposites of Self and World. You need the world to make those sounds - iron taps and wood floor - and in some way the world gets into a person more deeply through the sound."  "That's right," he agreed. "And that's what's important. When the clubs put carpets on the floor, it killed tap and made everything soft shoe. That takes away your sound - you can be visual but you're not audible." "So sight and sound are also big opposites in tap," I said.  "They sure are," he responded, "That's tap:

I told him of  a magnificent lecture Eli Siegel gave in 1951, "Aesthetic Realism As Beauty: The Dance," in which he explained that all forms of dance throughout the centuries arose from humanity's deepest desire, "to like the world on an honest basis."  I read him this great sentence: "Deeply the dance is an attempt to annul the hidden self by having it step out." Jimmy Slyde was very thoughtful. "Mmmm, I love that! It becomes expression - that's what we're talking about. And you would hope it's a better expression than the last one. You're searching, soul searching."  He paused. "You're looking at yourself inwardly and expressing yourself outwardly. You have to want to discover new things about yourself. This idea of Mr. Siegel is thought evoking." 

"Slyde's dancing experimented with rhythm and tonality, sliding into cascades of taps close to the floor. Sound was more important to Slyde than the step. Timing was crucial and music was his driving force." 

So a long, smooth motion is followed by many faster staccato clacking sounds and motions. "A slide," he said, "is not a determinable motion because it can be any length. Chhhoooooop! How long is that? When people ask me how I measure it, I don't measure it. It's a matter of feeling and a matter of knowing your music and applying it. It doesn't work all the time," he continued. "You may slide too far. It doesn't always add up, and I like that. There's margin for error."  In 1999 he told Janelle Ott, "I would like to be known as representing surprise - the unpredictable - and humor as a tap dancer."  I feel the rubato of Jimmy's slides - the rhythmic flexibility within a phrase or measure - has added something new, beautiful and exciting to tap. 

I told Mr. Slyde about Bennett Cooperman, Aesthetic Realism consultant, actor and dancer, who spoke of tap in a seminar titled, "Does the Way We Fight Make Us Strong or Weak?": 

"I remember when I first did a triple-time step in tap: it was so precise and so free! The step begins with a fight - you stamp the floor with your foot. Then you take a little jump, and what follows immediately is lightsome and pattering. Then another stamp, and the pattern begins again. When the dancer gets that rhythm of stamp and patter, something fighting and then almost delicately caressing the floor at once, it is beautiful." 

This exciting description of tap as a oneness of  fight and caress, led us to talk about the legendary Chair Dance. 

Yes it was! 

Ernest "Brownie Brown and Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughin do Chair Dance

Credit: P3Mediaworks, Courtesy of Chicago Human Rhythm Project

(l to r) Tap greats: Ernest "Brownie" Brown, Henry Le Tang, Jimmy Slyde, Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughlin and Filmmaker Ken Kimmelman at Tap Extravaganza 2003 Photo: David Bernstein

Wonderful opportunities to see more about the beauty of dance are yours at the Harlem Jazz Dance Festival all next week. For information and a schedule of events call (212) 353-7265 or visit www.aivjd.org