TAPPING INTO STORYTELLING AND HISTORY
Oral tradition is a big part of tap, festival’s artistic director says
The 2018 Vancouver International Tap Dance Festival includes a gala premiere performance, #tap, two improvisational Social Tap Jazz Jams, and a five-day Tap Dance Musicianship Residency. Guests include Sarah Reich, who tours internationally with Postmodern Jukebox; tap legend Heather Cornell; and Juno Award-winning musical director Nick Fraser, among others. We talked to Brampton, Ont.-based, first-time co-producer/artistic director Travis Knights about the festival, now in its 19th year.
Q How will you bring your vision to the festival?
A The workshops are all going to be all centred around music. We have an elder on faculty, we have youth on faculty, young fire on faculty. The elder is Heather Cornell, who ran Manhattan Tap for over 20 years in New York City. She’s Canadian-born. Splitting the bill is Sarah Reich, who’s this young firecracker, and in my opinion one of the hardest working women in tap dance today. She’s a fantastic performer. Myself and another tap dancer, Matthew Shields from Austin Texas, we’re going to come together and do the show #tap. For me, artistically, the main push is a romantic one: it’s about oral tradition, the idea of tap dance being part of an oral tradition.
Q Are these pieces that have been created for other tap dancers?
A Because the show involves storytelling and history, we’re going to be learning a piece from Heather’s Manhattan Tap. We’re going to be doing some classical rep. Sarah Reich is going to be doing some original music she composed for tap dance. There’s going to be contemporary work, classic work, solos and group pieces but it’s all going to be centred around storytelling. How can you pursue a full life by choosing to be a tap dancer? I hope that by
the end of the show the answer will be abundantly clear. Q What is the idea behind the Social Tap Jazz Jams?
A My interest in terms of pushing the dance or reviving what it was in its true form is through reconnecting with musicians. The relationship between musicians and dancers shouldn’t be divorced. I want to create a space or spaces where the musicians and dancers can come together and rekindle a fundamental relationship. I run a weekly jazz jam in Toronto. It’s going well, the musicians are showing up, the dancers are showing up. But the audience seems to be content with sitting and watching dance music. I want to be part of a cultural shift that recognizes the music for what it is and responding to it. It’s OK to move your shoulders if something ’s groovy. So I want to push the point of the importance of the interface between musicians and tap dancers. Q How important is a festival like this, not only for bringing
new audiences to the form, but for inspiring new dancers?
A It’s insanely important. My teacher was Ethel Bruneau (known as “Montreal’s tap queen”), a fantastic teacher. I was this big fish in a small pond. I come from Montreal originally. Nobody could touch me tapathetically. Until I went to a workshop in St. Louis, Missouri. (laughs). And was I humbled, so humbled. The learning and the growth started then, with the idea that there’s always somebody better than you. And the people, the young people I met in St. Louis, I’m still connected to them today. You become initiated in this family. Because the people teaching are directly linked to the oral tradition, to the heart of the dance itself. We become a kind of tapathetical family. To be connected to the art itself as opposed to just a studio is what these festivals have to offer.
Q You used a word there: “tapathetical.”
A It’s made up, but I think the word explains itself.