Word: tap
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...petty objections can overcome the fact that, if properly approached, the Quad Ice Project is a thing of lyrical and exotic beauty. For this to become readily apparent to the uninitiated requires the willing viewer to assume a more poetic and fantastical frame of mind than is his wont. Tap the vein of poetry latent within us all. Think, not bathroom windows, but towering glaciers. Or, if the bathroom window resemblance remains inescapable, try to overcome its more prosaic implications. These are not ordinary frosted windows; these are the bathroom windows of your dreams, though slightly colder than the discriminating...
...such man was Leon Collins, who is the subject of Songs Unwritten: A Tap Dancer Remembered, a documentary by David Wadsworth '84. The project is the first in a series for The Leon Collins Archive, Inc., which Wadsworth hopes will bring recognition to Collins and other lesser-known jazz performers...
...appreciate the innovation involved, it is important to understand that Collins was not technically a tap dancer, but a hoofer. Whereas a tap dancer concentrates on the effect of movement, a hoofer expresses himself through percussion, creating melodies with his feet. As Dizzy Gillespie explains during the film, "Leon was one of the pioneers of the bebop of dancing, along with Teddy Hale and Baby Laurence. They would dance one of my solos or one of Charlie Parker's, and they'd do it perfectly. They used to knock...
Songs is more than just an introduction to tap, however. It offers a true-life view of the period depicted in films like The Cotton Club, letting us savor the excitement while also exposing the effects of racism on the predominantly Black artists involved. We can appreciate the strong will and unshakeable devotion to craft, mixed with supressed anger and memories of injustice that made up the character of men like Leon Collins...
...short time after Wadsworth began the project, Leon Collins was diagnosed as having cancer, and he died in 1985. Songs Unwritten: A Tap Dancer Remembered goes a long way toward keeping the memory of Collins and his fellow innovators alive...