Five GUYS Named Joe.

Five pillars of the jazz dance world in profile

Jazz has lost its shame. Tawdry no more, jazz dance has legitimatized itself on Broadway and opera house stages, into college curricula, is studied and awarded degrees in universities. Split leaps and pelvic thrusts are just part of the pedagogy. Does that mean that jazz is meant to be shelved with the classics? Jazz dance can't be considered as just a passing fancy. Jazz will be around as long as it is interesting, exciting, and relevant. It is the rhythm and pulse of the human heart that is reflected in the music and the dance. Here are five not-so-ordinary Joes who helped build, and continue to support, the jazz dance community.

JOE TREMAINE

Joe Tremaine began studying dance in northern Louisiana, then in Metairie, so near N'Orleans you could almost smell Bourbon Street and hear the horns. Dance study was mostly ballet, with some high kicks and struts, but the jazz dance vocabulary and training hadn't clearly evolved yet in many corners of the country. Young Tremaine had wit and speed and an extraordinary extension--and he was a tall guy, which put him in great demand for partner work. And he had that "gotta dance" fire in his belly that, after college, drew him to New York City.

Tremaine had done his time: performing whenever the opportunity presented itself and attending classes with master teachers on the caravan circuit such as Gus Giordano and Danny Hoctor, for whom he later taught.

In New York City, he joined the June Taylor Dancers and performed with them on television in The Jackie Gleason Show. Nightclub shows, were the venue of choice for employable contemporary dancers and the long-haired Tremaine danced and discovered his skill for choreographing for stars in clubs--glamorous and not-so--across the United States. Tremaine moved to L.A. to work in television and movies, including two years on the Jerry Lewis TV Variety show that filmed at NBC in Burbank, six months on the Carol Burnett Show, at the Hollywood Palace, and many specials featuring Jack Benny, the Smothers Brothers, Jonathan Winters, Sonny & Cher, and in the movie, Hello, Dolly! (directed by Gene Kelly). There was lots of work in Las Vegas and in Hollywood, so it was at the famed Moro-Landis studios that Joe Tremaine established his school, which was to become the home of a style known as West Coast jazz.

The style was fast, loose, and trendy, emphasizing good technique for safety and longevity, but mutating constantly to fit the needs of the ever-growing and demanding television and video markets for dancers. It incorporated the Giordano earth-based straight-at-you attitude and the Luigi always moving, always reaching style; but it pushed the boundaries, adding athletic funk and hip-hop to the standard jazz vocabulary of movement, and over-the-head kicks for men and women that became Tremaine's trademark. Youngsters who came to Los Angeles came to the Tremaine studios to take class from the teachers there and to be seen by working (and casting) choreographers.

After a little success, Tremaine also incorporated style into his personal image. Gone was the lank-haired lean and hungry look of the looking-for-work dancer/choreographer. In its place came the warm-syrup Southern-gentleman charm, but Southern California style--the latest. Perfectly tailored and groomed, but still with the extraordinary red shoe extended high above the latest hair style. He had put in his time on the way up and it showed; he was and is a believable model of a contemporary success.

He added teaching at a couple of California universities to his resume, and, with Julie Adler, longtime multiple studio owner, he founded what was to be the enormously successful Tremaine Dance Conventions. The conventions bring the most trendy jazz styles, teachers, and choreographers to sites on a national tour, along with some technique and basic classes. Originally a real-life audition at the convention's end not only trained dance students, but selected the scholarship winners to Tremaine's school in Hollywood, and which formed the basis for a student company. Now sizeable cash awards go to winners. Tremaine teaches at every point on the tour. The convention tour reaches 30,000 students every year.

In 1997, Tremaine closed his studio in North Hollywood. Teaching midweek and touring every weekend left too little time for overseeing his award-winning instructional videos, for long-range planning for his business, for study, choreography, reflection, or rest. Besides, now almost every small studio school and university dance program offers jazz dance instruction. Tremaine's current crop of jazz dance heirs include award-winning choreographer and dancer Barry Lather, dancer-singer Paula Abdul, teacher and designer Marcea Lane, and Hollywood's hottest choreographer, Marguerite Derricks.

Joe Tremaine has been one of the mainstays of the Jazz Dance World Congress since its founding in 1990, and is honored as a master teacher of the younger generation of jazz dance.

JOE ORLANDO

Like Tremaine, Joe Orlando felt pressure that arose because "when your name is on a company, everyone wants you personally." The demands were too great; in 1984 he closed Joe Orlando Danstheatre, his Portland touring company of twenty-two (all paid) dancers. Oregon's loss was academia's gain when he joined the faculty and, later, chaired the dance department at Interlochen Arts Academy, a well-known residential high school in Michigan. While he was there, the department produced dance students who became finalists in the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts' Talent Search, with one honored as a presidential scholar and Orlando similarly honored for his work as dance educator.

In 1991, Orlando joined the dance faculty at Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Since that time he has developed the department's recruiting program, personally conducting audition tours and interviews to attract the finest students to SMU's dance program. He has also contributed to the department's insistence that its students must have a balance between the three major dance forms--ballet, jazz, and modern.

Working to achieve balance in his own life, Orlando travels widely to choreograph and conduct workshops during summers: seven years for Bat-Dor Dance Company of Israel, American Dance Festival in North Carolina, fourteen seasons in Alaska. Orlando has also been a regional director of Jazz Dance World Congress since its founding.

Orlando came late to dance; he was going to be a rock musician and actor. When he entered Miami-Dade Community College, he found there was a P.E. requirement and filled it with a dance class, thinking that movement skills would be useful to an actor. Dance came easily, and then overwhelmingly. First teacher Sherry Eve Penn, was excited about dance, had a broad knowledge of it, was energetic, and kind. Orlando was a natural. He auditioned and won a scholarship to Miami Conservatory, which was the school of Miami Ballet, directed by Thomas Armour and Robert Pike. He subsequently danced with the company for two years. But with twenty-two classes a week, Orlando achieved burnout. He left dance and moved to Massachusetts, but was drawn to take class again at a small studio there. Soon he enrolled at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and completed a degree in dance under the direction of the widely heralded instructor Richard Jones, a teacher of Limon, Horton, and, especially, pure Luigi techniques.

In New York City, Orlando studied with and became a demonstrator for Luigi. Summers found him also studying with Ana Made Forsythe and Milton Myers at the Alvin Ailey school, as well as with Thelma Hill, Lynn Simonson, and David Howard. Articles in Dance Magazine drew Orlando to Raul Gelabert's view of and books on kinesiology. He synthesized it all.

With warm enthusiasm and sparkling black eyes, Orlando makes a remarkable impression on his students and the dancers for whom he choreographs. He has achieved the skill of making every move in exactly the right proportion for his compact body--as if each choreography were set for him. It is an achievement that perhaps cannot be taught, but he demonstrates that it is a possibility to each of his students. And he makes them think about it.

"What was always missing for me in dance training," says Orlando, "was mental challenge. I was fascinated with philosophy and the nature of man." At the New School of Social Research, Orlando designed his own major in philosophy of man's creation of art, completing his M.A. degree with a written thesis and dance concert.

"Everything comes from the music," says Orlando, who remembers the first time he heard Count Basie play. Dancers he looks for must be "very, very attuned to music to have the rhythm in the steps. Jazz is driven by the pulses of the earth and the body.... What dancers should be about is having the ability to reach right out into people's souls."

His current project is about a jazz singer who did just that on the streets of Deep Ellum (Dallas, Texas) during the 1920s--Blind Lemon Jefferson. The original work, written by blues scholar Alan Govenar, cowritten and directed by Akin Babatunde, and choreographed by Orlando, premiered recently at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas to good reviews and is currently awaiting a producer to take it to New York.

JOE LANTERI

A native Pennsylvanian, Joe Lanteri is the first member of his family to be born in the United States. Raised with old-world Italian values in courtesy and propriety, Lanteri discovered his love for performing when he was cast as a lead in a prep school production of Brigadoon. Since his parents supported his aspirations but insisted on a college education, Lanteri chose to attend the University of Southern California, with an Irene Ryan scholarship, where he completed a B.F.A. degree in Acting/Theater. Always an athlete, he discovered dance through USC faculty members Bill and Jacqui Landrum. Emphasizing classical ballet technique but with a modern influence, they gave Lanteri the tools he needed to commit to serious study of dance. In Los Angeles studios, he studied jazz, eventually with Jackie Sleight and Carol Connors.

Following graduation and his return to New York, Lanteri continued his study of jazz dance, especially with popular New York teacher Michelle Kadison, who introduced him to teaching.

Work on cruise ships as a performer brought out Lanteri's additional talents as choreographer, organizer, and producer. He found that he had an uncanny ability to showcase each performer's special talents and to organize many productions at the same time. Filling this need for the cruise ship producers led to the founding of New York City Theatrical Events, which provided a vehicle for Lanteri and his singer-dancer friends to fill those times between jobs. It kept them working, networking, and in shape. Lanteri would write the script, cast, rehearse, and fly performers to special events or industrials and provide a specialized Broadway-style revue for the client, complete with backdrops, lights, and costumes.

Lanteri's theatrical events business goes "on the back burner," especially from December through July, while he travels the country teaching workshops and holding regional competitions and national finals for his New York City Dance Alliance.

"In the last eighteen months, the events business has really opened up," says Lanteri, "especially with the Trump-Atlantic City casino opportunities. They want a New York level of sophistication, and we can provide them with that kind of production." Since September, 1998, Lanteri has produced eight complete shows, and some "have a life beyond Atlantic City." NYC Theatrical Events allows Lanteri to offer employment to talented young performers who have progressed through the competitions, and to mix them with seasoned Broadway and touring performers. This sharing of experience with the best of the new is an extension of Lanteri's desire to provide for himself and his friends, and to pass on jazz education and heritage. As part of that education process beyond the NYC Dance Alliance workshops, Lanteri continues to teach at The Juilliard School, Steps on Broadway, and at least one international venue each year.

"I look at the older guys in jazz dance," muses Lanteri, "and they may have cut back, but they're still dancing, choreographing, and teaching. There's something spiritual in that. How wonderful--and lucky--we are to be doing what we love. In twenty years I still want to be doing just what I'm doing. It's what I love."

JOE ISTRE

Deep in the heart of Texas, Winnie is a small town about an hour east of Houston; there Joe Istre began his dance studies when dance teacher Kathy Skinner opened her school. Fifteen-year-old Istre's mother insisted that he try a class. "I wanted to be a doctor, but after one class I knew I wanted to dance. It changed my whole life," he remembers. "I've seen that happen with other teenage boys; when they have the passion, they learn very quickly."

By the time he was seventeen, he was teaching classes but still studying. Istre had a scholarship to attend Southern Methodist, but, "having grown up in such a small town I didn't think I was ready for a big college, so I went to Lamar University for the first couple of years, and then just stayed and finished my degree in dance there."

"In the late seventies and eighties, there were $49 flights to New York, so Kelli [Barclay] and I would fly up whenever we could clear our schedules and take as many as five classes a day and then fly back." There were also classes from master teachers at workshops and conventions--training in voice, ballet, tap, modern, and jazz. Jazz, but modern-based technique like Gus Giordano's and theatrical like that taught by Lee Theodore and Michael Owens.

After graduation, the move to New York, and gaining his union cards, Istre danced in such shows as 42nd Street, Chess, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and More Dirty Dancing tour. He assisted choreographers David Bell, Randy Skinner, and Michael Brenner in the West End show Hot Mikado in London, the Tony-nominated Broadway show Ain't Broadway Grand, and the German version of Beauty and the Beast.

Istre is still working as a dancer in industrials and productions, such as a recent new workshop at Lincoln Center with choreographer Susan Stroman. Like any working dancer, he takes class; whenever he can it's a theater-based, percussive and lyrical class with Michael Owens who "really teaches, not just holds class." But Istre admits he is in a transitional phase between being a dancer and being the choreographer; recognizing the difficulties of a dual persona, he often works with his old friend and fellow traveler Kelli Barclay, whose eye he trusts. Because he is thorough, versatile, multi-talented, and charming, Istre is in demand throughout the country for industrials, setting or choreographing new pieces or teaching workshops. It is even more so since he choreographed High Heels for Twin Cities Ballet, which was presented at Regional Dance America's national festival in Houston and was then selected for performance at the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1998.

"There's bigger things on the way," says Istre, "and they're tinged with theater. I can feel them." For a long-term goal, Istre dreams of a beach in Hawaii where the sign reads "Bait, Tackle, and Jazz Dance."

"I am so fortunate that I have been teaching almost all my dancing life," he says, praising his employers at Performing Arts High School of Long Island. "They understand how much give and take there can be between a working dancer and kids who wants to be one, so they are very generous about letting me go when I have to."

"Jazz dancers have to love the art of movement; the percussion, the rhythm--it's all built on the music. I look at how a dancer feels the dancing; you can teach them anything else."

JO ROWAN

So I lied about the fifth Joe! Motherless at age ten, Jo Rowan grew up as just "one of the guys" among her brothers and their friends and her social-activist father. It's hard to believe that when you see this delicate ballerina projecting all her School of American Ballet and Russian training, and the insistence on precision of technique in her master classes, instructional records, books, and tapes. It is her American spirit that combines all that, and still shows her tensile strength, her hooting laughter and enthusiasm for fun, and straight-ahead, get-it-done business sense and organization.

A concern that students weren't well-trained in how to earn a living and manage was what got this professional dancer and her Juilliard-trained musician husband, John Bedford, into the business of teaching. Rowan's insistence on honoring and legitimizing what is intrinsically American, especially jazz, theater, and tap dance, has enlivened the degree programs she and Bedford founded at Oklahoma City University. The degrees now offered include a bachelor of performing arts in dance (equally balancing the three techniques); a B.S. in dance management; an M.B.A. in arts management which requires an internship with a professional arts organization; and a B.S. in entertainment business. There are eight levels of technical instruction each in tap, jazz, and ballet, and all majors take technique classes. The degree programs also require extensive liberal arts study, dance history, dance health, and much more. Dancers graduate ready to succeed at auditions, negotiate contracts, and conduct rewarding careers.

In 1999, Dr. Stephen G. Jennings, president of OCU, proclaimed, "Oklahoma City University celebrates twenty years of dedicated teaching and outstanding student success with the formation of the School of American Dance & Arts Management.... Under the leadership of John Bedford and Jo Rowan, this program attracts talented students from across the country to OCU for the opportunity to study American dance forms and prepare themselves for careers in the entertainment industry.... [They] pioneered the degree ... and it continues to be the premiere program of its kind today...."

Rowan points with pride to Rhonda Miller, an OCU graduate during the 1980s who is now co-owner of the Edge studio in Los Angeles and LA Danceforce. "Rhonda is multitrained," says Rowan. "She sings, is a dynamic choreographer, and dances ballet, jazz, and tap. She has an integrity and is very ethical--and with a great business sense."

Impressed with the Asian tradition of honoring living artists for their contributions to a culture, Rowan set up the Living Treasure in America Dance Awards. Jazz dance master, Gus Giordano was among the first to receive this designation. Rowan has also been an advisor to the Jazz Dance World Congress since its founding.

Recently, when Rowan took OCU's American Spirit Dance Company, which she founded, to open the evening's show at the annual National Tap Dance Day Flo-Bert Awards at New York City's Town Hall, she spent much of her time before and after running to see her nineteen former students performing on and off-Broadway. And still she hurried to take classes herself.

"I learn from everything I do," she says. "I learned from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and from Radio City Music Hall, from the sixty Equity musicals and commercials, from the trip to China, and from just watching good people." "I think it's because my father really cared about his fellow man when it wasn't very safe or profitable to do so that I just have this itch to see that the arena we work in is fair and ethical and acknowledged as important. I mean, we have to be capable and responsible to each other."

K. C. Patrick is an associate editor at Dance Magazine.