Tap roots

If
you happen to pass by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on a Monday evening, you may
hear a thundering, percussive noise. If it piques your curiosity, you might
walk over to the steel grates and look down through the window into an old
basement gymnasium.

            There you’ll find the answer to the
age-old question: what is the sound of 30 feet tapping?

            In the gym that serves as a studio
for Park Avenue Dance, you’ll see people of all ages learning tap-dance
routines choreographed to the music of a variety of composers, from Duke
Ellington to Stevie Wonder.

            You might catch the class breaking
into laughter as students temporarily overstep the invisible fence of technical
skill. That’s when their teacher, Linda Goebel, steps out and demonstrates,
making it look beyond easy — downright effortless. And, after another false
start or two, the dancers will be doing precisely the routine that tripped them
up minutes before.

            When you see tap dancing in
Rochester — from high school and college musical theater productions to
classes in neighborhood recreation centers — it’s a good bet you can trace
those taps back to Goebel. If she hasn’t instructed the dancers themselves, she
probably taught their instructor. Goebel’s what’s known as a teacher’s teacher.

            Throughout the past 25 years, she’s
taught at the Orcutt-Bottsford School of Dance, School of the Arts, the
University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, and many more. For
the past 10 years she’s been an instructor at Park Avenue Dance. (She also
teaches at the Terry Fyke School of Dance in Scottsville and RIT.)

            “Her level of commitment is
phenomenal,” says Carol Hubbell, who has taken classes with Goebel and taught
dance with her at School of the Arts. “Her rhythms and the way she comes up
with new things are incredible. They’re truly difficult. You have to be there
from the first day and not miss a class.”

            Shuffles, buffalos, pick ups and
pull backs; soft shoe, hoofing, paddle and roll — there is a whole world
waiting behind the tap-dance door for those who choose to step into it.

            “Tap is a totally different
vocabulary than any other dance form,” says Goebel, who turned 50 on May 25,
which happens to be National Tap Dance Day. Goebel is quick to explain that she
shares a birthday with one of her heroes, Bill Bojangles Robinson; the holiday
is for him.

Like one of
Robinson’s best-known dance partners, Shirley Temple, Goebel started dancing as a young
child. She began when she was five for the simplest of reasons: the girl who
lived across the street from her Chili home was taking dance lessons.

            “She stopped dancing. I never
stopped,” says Goebel, whose childhood was far from easy. She was eight years
old when her father, a designer at Eastman Kodak Co., died of lung cancer. Her
mother had to go to work as a secretary. “Our life was pretty much survival.”

            And those dance lessons weren’t
exactly productive.

            “They didn’t break it down,” she
says. “I had no technique, no rhythm, no musicality. It was crap-tap, as I call
it now; just terrible tap. But I just had to dance. I watched Lawrence Welk
every weekend with my grandmother.”

            Goebel attended Pennsylvania’s
Slippery Rock State College as a dance minor, but she didn’t find a lot of
encouragement there. Back then, she says, teachers didn’t bother with
constructive criticism; they just attacked.

Returning to Rochester, she stopped
dancing for two years. No one told her to stick to it.

            “Dancing is very personal; you are
the instrument,” she says. “I was very vulnerable, very sensitive. I left home.
I just kind of spread my wings in the wrong direction. I was doing pottery; I
was considering another lucrative career — in pottery.”

            Things got better when Goebel
married her husband John, a mechanical and manufacturing engineer. They have
two sons; the oldest, a jazz percussionist, will enter the Eastman School of
Music in September.

            Goebel gradually gravitated back to
dance. “I had to start all over again, which is why I’m so adamant about
technique,” she says. “Bad instruction is a waste of time and money.”

            She hooked up with Val Mates, an
eccentric instructor who really knew tap, Goebel says. His studio walls were
lined with photographs of himself dancing. “He always said he should have had
all the jobs Fred Astaire got, but he went into the service.”

            Goebel finished her degree in modern
dance at SUNY Brockport under Susannah Newman, graduating Magna Cum Laude. She
also studied with William Orlowski, a student of Paul Draper who founded the
National Tap Dance Company of Canada. She began to get choreography and
teaching jobs.

            Goebel’s class goes way beyond “Tea
for Two” tap. Her students dance to Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” “Take the A
Train,” or “C-Jam Blues.” And they are just as likely to dance to more recent
selections from Earth Wind & Fire, the Ohio Players, Bill Withers, or the
Average White Band. On one recent evening, Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” was
blasting from the speakers while the class learned intricate moves that
beautifully complemented the music.

            “[Wonder] writes great music, so how
could you not dance to it? Any choreographer will tell you the biggest
challenge is finding danceable music,” Goebel says. “It’s got a strong beat and
there are spaces between the notes. It’s a motivating thing; students get into
the groove with it. It helps their energy. It’s not Gershwin, it’s not Count
Basie, but it’s very danceable music.”

            During every class, Goebel digs
through a case holding dozens of CDs. Other favorites are Traveler ’99: A Planet Full of Grooves and Grateful Dead drummer
Mickey Hart’s collection of African rhythms, Supralingua.

            “As a choreographer you’re always
looking for inspiration,” she says. “I’ve called radio stations. You’re in a
restaurant and you hear something. You write it down on a napkin. You just stop
and say, ‘I have to have that song.’ It hits you and you have to have that
music.”

            That’s not to say music is Goebel’s
only inspiration. A few years ago, she choreographed Pulse, a modern dance piece built around heart beats and
arrhythmia, evoking elements of excitement, relaxation, and birth.

            If there is a beat, she’s attracted.

            “When my son is drumming, I’ll
either go up and start dancing or say stop and write it down in dancer’s
count,” she says.

            Like her tap-dance heroes, Goebel’s
comfortable improvising to music or a beat. While many of her students are
reluctant to try improvising, she has an 8-year-old student who loves it. He’s
not inhibited by the knowledge of how difficult it can be.

Tap dancing
has much in common with jazz. It’s a bi-product of the American cultural melting pot.
African Americans originated the art during the 19th century, when freed slaves
migrated to cities. There African rhythms and dances met up with Irish jigs and
English clogging and a new form of dance took shape. Tap gained popularity
through minstrel and vaudeville shows (often with white performers imitating
the moves of blacks) and worked its way into early movies through innovators
like Bojangles Robinson.

            “He’s the one who brought tap
dancing to the balls of the feet,” Goebel says. “When you’re on the balls of
your feet you have the treble sound, and when you’re on your heels you have the
bass sound. You’re a drummer. He’s huge. His impact on tap and breaking down
racial barriers — his relationship with Shirley Temple is very important; a
black man holding hands with a little white girl and being responsible for a
little white girl — was very significant. I talk about that in my classes.”

A few years ago, when she was teaching
at School of the Arts, Goebel celebrated Robinson’s birthday in the same manner
as tap dancers in New York City. She had her students tap around a city block,
in this case the block of the Memorial Art Gallery.

            Goebel loves Robinson, but her
all-time favorite tap dancer is Gregory Hines.

            “He said, ‘We stand on the shoulders
of those who come before us.’ If you’re not aware of all of the contributions
of all of those people, then how do we get where we are now? I love his
musicality, his love of the art, the smile on his face, his improvisational
skills, his whole style,” she says.
“There’s just nobody who danced like he did.”

Tap dance is
not frozen in time; it’s a living art form open to new ideas.

            “People are constantly adding things
to it,” Goebel says. “There’s electronic tap and industrial tap and there’s
‘Stomp’ and ‘Tap Dogs.’ Society is more aggressive, it’s louder. And that’s
reflected in our arts. It’s open-ended. But I want my students to know what a
soft shoe is. You have to know the basics. There are young dancers now who are
more athletic. I’m not saying they’re more athletic than the Nicholas Brothers,
because a lot of this is history repeating itself whether they know it or not.
But they’re inventing new steps and the steps are harder.”

            Tap is surprisingly vital in today’s
popular culture. It’s prominently featured in the latest video by Prince. It’s
used as a percussion solo on “Bright Lights, Big City,” a cut on James Blood
Ulmer’s latest album, No Escape From the
Blues. And it plays a major role in Showtime
at the Apollo (5 p.m. Sundays on UPN). Of course, some of the tap artists
at the Apollo get booed off the stage.

When asked if she ever encounters a
student with two left feet, Goebel is diplomatic.

            “I have met students who are
rhythmically challenged, which makes my job a lot harder,” she says. “I can
help them improve, it’s just going to take them longer.”

            She has more than 100 students at
any given time ranging in age from eight to their mid-70s. Occasionally, one of
them takes her training right to the top. Jason Dougherty, who graduated from
School of the Arts, left for New York and, in his first audition, got into a
revival of West Side Story.

            Goebel has choreographed many shows
locally, but she’s choosy.

            “I have to know who the director
is,” she says. “I want a director who respects choreographers and dancers. And
if I don’t like the show, I don’t want to do it.”

            She’s fond of Crazy for You and The Wiz,
but don’t ask her to do Grease. While
directors get a script to follow and bandleaders get a score, the choreographer
is usually expected to start from scratch.

            “The dance has to be
re-choreographed, Goebel says. “I might take the style or some steps, but I
would not plagiarize an entire dance. And you’re dealing with all levels of
dance, all body types, the limitations of the stage, etc.”

            “It’s a real creative challenge. Not
every kid is a master dancer,” says Robert Sagan, a former Rush Henrietta High
School teacher who worked with Goebel from 1980 to 1998 on musicals like No No Nanette, Pippin,and Guys and Dolls. “She’s wonderful. She
was a master teacher and the kids really appreciated what she did for them.”

Goebel has
carefully developed her tap curriculum over decades.

            “Tap is technical but built on other
skills,” she says. “If you take those in a logical progression, you will be
successful. When you take those out of order or do too much too fast, you won’t
be successful.”

            Her class attracts people from all
walks of life. And they all take the class for different reasons.

            Eleanor Dow enters the waiting area
after the intermediate class on a recent Monday night and sinks into a chair
drained of energy.

            “It’s a really good workout and it’s
fun,” says Dow, a senior at Pittsford Mendon High School who will attend Mt.
Holyoke College next year. “It works all your muscles. Today we did butterflies
and my muscles are hurting, but that’s good. It helps your rhythm and posture.
It helps my singing and clarinet playing. It’s about controlling your body.”

            “If I’m not tapping, you know I’m
really sick,” says Valerie Johnson, an administrative law judge who loves the
camaraderie of the class. “Tap keeps me grounded.”

            “I’ve followed her from location to
location since 1979,” says Kitty Wise, former staff person for Friends of the
Rochester Public Library. “She is not a kiddy review teacher. I love the music.
I like the variety of her choreography; sometimes we’ll do Fred Astaire or Gene
Kelly. She gives us bits of dance history.”

            Wise, who is over 70, says studying
tap has many fringe benefits. “It’s made me a better tennis player. Tap is
wonderful for helping you move fast in different directions,” she says. It also
helps her sleep. “Some people count sheep, I visualize myself dancing and I
count it out and say the steps.”

            “Students come out smiling,
realizing it’s not for other people, it’s something they can do too,” Goebel
says. “I’m truly honored that these people choose to spend their time and their
money with me.”

            By the time I arrive on a recent
evening, she has been dancing for three hours and is still dancing along with
her fourth class. Goebel, who is also certified as a group aerobics instructor,
eats well — no junk food, plenty of fruits and vegetables, and plenty of
calcium. She makes sure to get enough sleep, does weight work, and stretches a
lot.

            “When I’m 80 I will be dancing,” she
says. “There’s no question. If I’m breathing I’m dancing. There’s a lot more to
do, a lot of places I haven’t been yet. When you’re doing something you love
it’s not like work.”

Linda Goebel teaches tap
at Park Avenue Dance, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 15 Vick Park B. 461-2766,
www.parkavenuedancecompany.org

This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2004.