Call and Response
From a young age, Andrew Nemr knew his calling was tap. He responded by making a career of it. So intent is he on spreading the word (and the sound) of this specialized dance form, that he formed his own company--"CPD Plus."
Andrew's parents wanted him to interact early with other kids, so at 3 ? years old, they plunked him down in a dance studio that was walking distance from home. "I started there, Chris Collins Dance Studio, with a combo class--tap, ballet and tumbling and stayed with him for seven years."
Then, "In 1989, I went to see the movie 'Tap' at its opening night showing at Union Station in Washington, D.C., at which point I was flipped. I decided to pursue the life of a tap dancer from that moment on. Doors seemed to open from then on as if I was being guided on a path."
That path led him to study with Eddie Brown, Dr. Bunny Briggs, Dr. Jimmy Slyde, LeRoy Myers, Ernest "Brownie" Brown, Dr. James "Buster" Brown, Henry "Phace" Roberts, Mable Lee, Dr. Henry LeTang, Tina Pratt, Dianne Walker, Ted Levy, Savion Glover and Gregory Hines. From there, his talents took him from the 2001 opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival to the 2002 Winter Olympics Arts Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 2002 Nijinsky Awards in Monaco, as the dance captain of Savion Glover's TiDii, and to Grenoble, France as the only tap dancer featured in the "World Soul" collective. Today, Andrew regularly performs with the legendary Les Paul at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York and teaches classes as a faculty member of Broadway Dance Center.
"For me, a good class would integrate
in some call-and-response for ear training, maybe even some improvisation. The establishment of time is integral
to one understanding the relationship of the dance to the music. So a good
tap dance class must have that as a foundation."
And then, with luck, that foundation will turn out an extraordinary professional. "There is a very big difference between someone who tap dances and someone who is a tap dancer...Tap dancers also have the ability to create and be the music, allowing them to tell a story as a monologue with no trimmings."
But then the challenge is to take that solo ability and layer it into tap's rich heritage because, as Andrew said, "Tap dancers are all soloists. They all do their own thing. They all go out and if they even meet up in the same town, it's a coincidence...Tap dancing now has a history, more than 100 years of content that one can learn to deal with, and should. There are only a number of individuals who are tied to that history. At least in my company, it is imperative that one aspect is the passing on of whatever knowledge I've acquired through my connection with the Masters to the other company members. That way our dancing is not rooted in ourselves, but rather our relationship with the dance."
So Andrew set out to build a tap community with a common vision before this most unique of dance forms becomes fragmented or, worse, lost. "I think it's unfortunate that a major contribution of this country to the dance world still has to fight for recognition, especially within its own borders....I looked at the tap community as a whole and found a lacking in the presentation of the art form. All the powerful dancing seemed to be stuck in soloists. There wasn't emotionally packed dancing coming from a group dedicated to enriching the art form. So I got together with two other dancers who I enjoyed the company of, as well as their dancing--Michelle Dorrance and Nicholas Young, and started throwing around some ideas."
Those ideas led to the formation of Andrew's tap company, "CPD Plus." (CPD, by the way, stands for "Cats Paying Dues"). "I believe a tap company is important to the development of the art form for the same reason a band is important to the development of music. When there are multiple voices working together over a common foundation, the amount of creative potential and possibilities for individual growth are immense. The ability to make a more potent statement also becomes available."
"I think tap dancers tend to be a little more aware than the average human being. Having to operate at such a high awareness level on stage, emotionally and technically, especially when working with live musicians, tends to flow over into everyday life. We hear things. We hear things in silence, we hear things in what we see."
So the call is for a new generation of exceptional tap dancers, a generation to carry on the legacy. Let's hope the response is deafening.
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