I search for different tonalities in my taps. But my greatest pleasure is hearing a note I haven't heard before, hearing a chord that sparks something new.
I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.
Just like a comedian has a certain joke or a jazz musician has a riff that they know will get the crowd, a tap dancer always has a step.
What we're looking for at my school is intellectuals. People who want to talk about the art and be knowledgeable about it. People who want to know the history. Not everybody needs to be performing.
Tap dancing is like... it's equivalent to music, not only for the African American community, but also for the world. Tap dancing is like language; it's like air: it's like everything else that we need in order to survive. I'm blessed and honored to be knowledgeable of the art form and to be a part of the art form.
The connection of what I do to flamenco lies in the whole lament, whole cry, whole pouring back into the earth and giving energy back to the earth. It's a cry and a celebration. That's what music, sound, vibration should do. It should spark energy in someone.
I come from a long line of people who express themselves through the dance. I come from a long line of people who create music through their feet.
Movie making is such a long process, and they only use that one take, although you do it over and over about 30 times. Live theatre is that one time and one time only.
I try new stuff every time I perform. I have steps I do that I know are definite, and stuff I can make up right then and there and then forget.
There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.
La Cave was a great platform for me to learn and be able to listen in on conversations and just get a lot of notes and teachings from those older guys.
There's a tendency to think tap's had its day, but 'Happy Feet' kept us in the race. That penguin is our Shirley Temple.
I'm more a percussion instrument than a dancer.
I'm still growing, still learning. I'm still open and vulnerable enough to know there's much more to be taught to me and learned by me. I hope I don't reach my pinnacle on this earth where I think I know it all.
I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.
Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.
It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.
I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all.
I don't deal in terminology, I deal with expressions: colors, shapes, tones, characteristics.
