Man With a Mission Taps Into Chicago.

LANE ALEXANDER AND THE HUMAN RHYTHM PROJECT

LANE ALEXANDER IS A MAN WITH A MISSION: TO SWAY GRANTING AGENCIES and audiences into recognizing tap dancing as a genuine art, worthy of funding and a home. Thanks to him, Chicago enjoys the Human Rhythm Project, an annual celebration of tap and allied dance forms that Alexander co-founded and directs. * On the eve of the eleventh Chicago Human Rhythm Project, he said, "I realized at the beginning of my career as a dancer that tap dancing was a homeless art, nomadic and poorly supported. It was not accepted academically until relatively recently. Yet the CHRP celebrates tap dance as the quintessentially American art form." * Alexander is a professional tap dancer, a virtuoso, hailed in the press as a combination of dance legends Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. In addition to his American appearances, he appears regularly in solo concerts in European cities--Paris, Brussels, Zurich, Stuttgart, Milan, Helsinki--where he also conducts workshops in the art of tap dancing. In Chicago, he is especially busy as a teacher. He has taught at Lou Conte's Hubbard Street studios, at the Dance Center of Columbia College, and at the Giordano Dance Center. Currently, he teaches as an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University. As a choreographer, Alexander has created dances for companies in Chicago, Minneapolis, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and throughout Europe.

Alexander is a fair-haired, slim dancer whose easy grace belies his 40-plus years and whose broad vocabulary of carefully chosen words marks him as an educator. It is clear that he has thought long and logically about the history and present problems of tap dance, and he knows how to express his thoughts. He often meets the public in the self-appointed role of advocate for tap.

Alexander was born to musician parents in Fort Worth, Texas, where tap lessons at age 7 with teacher Laine Johns, "a tiny Welsh woman with lightning feet," he says, captured his interest. He quit, however, when the family moved to Georgia, because he didn't want to be "the only boy--again." Instead, he studied percussion with his stepfather, a professional musician with a fourteen-piece jazz orchestra.

He later enrolled as a pre-law major at the University of Texas, but found working as a book binder in the law library dreary. Unhappy and depressed, he was watching the Tony Awards show on television and saw a dance number. "I could do that," he said. "But you're not, are you?" replied his mother.

He quit the university and started studying again at the Dance Workshop in San Antonio. Studio Director Susan Beil Connally helped him get a scholarship to a workshop taught by jazz master Gus Giordano in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. Both Chicago and the classes in jazz dance suited Alexander, who was accepted in David Pusczewicz's Chicago-based dance company. This highly respected modern troupe danced an art-conscious repertoire in Chicago and during a Midwestern tour. Modern dance was fine as an introduction to a professional career, but when offered a chance to tap dance professionally, Alexander joined the Texas-based Austin on Tap, a concert group that toured widely. He was happy to be tapping. When the tour ended, he was invited to join the Toronto-based National Tap Dance Company of Canada. This company, directed by William Orlowski, performed to symphonic music. Those accompaniments instilled in the young dancer a preference for classical music, but not without an appreciation of good jazz.

By the time the stint with the Canadians was over, after two years of the complications of work permits and residency visas, Alexander had an awareness of the practical problems of presenting dance, especially tap in concert form.

By a stroke of good fortune, Alexander received a grant to attend the Portland Tap Festival while worrying, "What next?" Oregon offered classes, workshops, and performances by tap legends. Alexander recalls, "In Oregon, I met some greats of tap dancing--Honi Coles, Steve Condos, LaVaughn Robinson, Dianne "Lady Di" Walker, Brenda Bufalino, and more. Later, some of these artists appeared in my projects, even became personal friends."

ON HIS RETURN TO CHICAGO, HE had a mission that he confided to Kelly Michaels. Michaels, a modern dancer whom Alexander knew from the days in the Puszh dance troupe, agreed. Together they came up with a project that would involve both educational and performing activities. The Chicago Human Rhythm Project was born.

The brave but small beginning consisted of two days of workshops in Evanston's Giordano Dance Center and one performance in a 350-seat auditorium at Northwestern University. Some 200 people attended the program, which illustrated various human rhythms in addition to tap. Among the performers were the Trinity Irish Dancers, the African American Najwa Dance Corps, and Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater. With little business experience, the pioneer founders depended on volunteers for the needed help.

Alexander and Michaels together directed the Chicago Human Rhythm Project for five years. After Michaels's death in 1995, Alexander served as director alone. Each year he expanded the educational programs, and the concerts became more festive as stars of the profession such as Savion Glover, Luke Cresswell, and Bill Irwin made appearances.

The 2001 Chicago Human Rhythm Project has a by-now quite sophisticated director who has the attention and respect of funding agencies such as the Illinois Arts Council. This year's Project is budgeted for more than $450,000--quite a contrast to the $4,000 budget of 1990. The original two-day festival has stretched to six months. Events started on April 22, when auditions were held and $10,000 in scholarships awarded. An unusual April event (sponsored by Leo's Dancewear and Target, under the CHRP umbrella) was the All-Chicago Tap Off, in which ambitious soloists and groups participated for cash prizes, medals, and trophies. But the important events of the CHRP, the many educational offerings and world-class programs, will be stretched out over the summer, and many prestigious names are scheduled to appear and teach the popular workshops.

In 1990, there were 52 students; in 2000, there were 700. Early Projects were attended by local students, but by 1998 there were amateurs and pros from Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, England, Japan, Malaysia, and Brazil.

This year, from August 6 to 12, in the classrooms of Northwestern University's Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center, the CHRP offers two residencies, sixteen one-week courses, and twenty-four master classes, plus seminars, panel discussions, and video and film showings. Tap dance has developed a variety of styles: classical tap, rhythm tap, flash tap, New Broadway tap rhythms, as well as jazz dance, hip-hop, swing, Appalachian clogging, and "body drumming." The interest in classes and styles created a demand for showcasing the legacies of three pioneering Chicago tap dance masters: Tommy Sutton, Sammy Dyer, and Jimmy Payne Sr. This year's CHRP schedule includes three concerts that will feature the proteges of these masters--and that includes Jimmy Payne Jr.

The twenty faculty members listed for the 2001 educational events include Alexander, Savion Glover, Danny Daniels, LaVaughn Robinson, "Lady Di" Walker, Ted Levy, and Billy Siegenfeld. They are all headliners; during the festival there will be three faculty concerts in the Josephine Lewis Theatre on the Northwestern University campus.

This year's large faculty also includes Sam Weber. "Weber was a ballet dancer in the Joffrey Ballet," explains the director, who said Weber had begun as a tapper, but found gainful employment easier to come by in the ballet world. "Now he choreographs complex tap pieces to music by classical composers like Bach," Alexander said.

Tap artists such as Bril Barrett, who first entertained bystanders on street corners, will be applauded in such posh places as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the Dance Center of Columbia College. The MCA will also host a gala featuring the Israeli company Sheketak, who blend "rhythm tap, body percussion, and live music to create a hybrid rhythmic expression," explains Alexander. Not incidentally, the MCA will be the place for the annual JUBA! Award. The award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the field, goes this year to Gregory Hines.

Special days and ceremonies attest to the recognition tap dancing is receiving. There was a congratulatory decree from Congress to mark National Tap Day, May 25. "That date is Bill Robinson's birthday," said Alexander. Once-lowly tap dancing will receive special recognition on September 9 and 10 at the elegant Symphony Center when Alexander appears as soloist with the Chicago Sinfonietta and dances to Morton Gould's Tap Dance Concerto, which premiered in 1952.

"The Chicago Human Rhythm Project, through its dual [educational and entertainment] program, promotes understanding of the intricacies and techniques of tap dancing, and creates performance opportunities" for tap artists, Alexander said. "Tap dancing, which was almost a lost art, is having its renaissance--and this time, it's here to stay!"

Ann Barzel, a senior editor for Dance Magazine, has written about dance for more than half a century.