AYODELE CASEL—internationally acclaimed tap artist and educator born in the Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico—is riding especially high this year. In September, New York’s Joyce Theater presented her world premiere collaboration with four-time Grammy-winning Afro-Latin jazz artist Arturo O’Farrill. Casel was named the 2019–2020 Frances B. Cashin fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where lucky students will draw from her scholarship of tap’s cultural roots while she researches and readies her next narrative work. Dance writer EVA YAA ASANTEWAA recently caught up with Casel to learn more about her inspiration (including Gregory Hines) and the new future of tap.
EVA YAA ASANTEWAA: I’ve been a fan of your wonderful musicianship as a dancer, and also your activism and advocacy for the art. How did you get your start in tap?
AYODELE CASEL: When I was nine, I moved to Puerto Rico to live with my grandparents, and I didn’t speak Spanish at all. I remember being there and feeling really at a loss and isolated because I couldn’t express myself. Of course, children learn language quickly, and I was fine a few months after that. I lived there for six years, and when I came back to New York, I had been out of practice with my English, so I remembered going into high school as a sophomore and also feeling like, Oh, gosh, am I saying the right word? Is this the right definition?
Shortly after that, I saw Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for the very first time, and I was completely enchanted by them. I was so intrigued by how they were moving their feet and the sound. I tried to teach myself how to do it by watching them, to varying degrees of success. Then as an acting major in NYU, I had the opportunity to take my very first tap class as a movement course. I was so excited! I went to Payless Shoe Source to buy myself some tap shoes—even though they don’t sell tap shoes. I wanted them to look like Ginger Rogers’ shoes in Follow the Fleet. So I got something that sort of looked like it, and I had taps put on, and I entered my first tap class and it was so great. About a year into that, I had a mutual friend of Baakari Wilder who was, like, Oh, you two should meet because he taps and you clearly love tap dancing.
EY: Yeah!
AC: Baakari said let’s meet at Fazil’s and then we’ll jam. I get there, and I hear Baakari warming up and I remember looking up from tying my shoe laces, like, Oh, my God, wait a minute. This is not what I have been doing at all. It changed everything for me from that moment on because I learned tap dancing is not a series of steps. Tap dancing is expression, it’s communication, and it comes from this legacy of incredible dancers. I remember him saying, Do you know Gregory Hines? Do you know the Nicholas Brothers? Do you know Savion Glover? Do you know Jimmy Slyde? and of course I knew none of them. As the list went on, I realized that this thing that I was so drawn to was really connected to a rich and sophisticated history that African‑American people were at the forefront of. For me as a black and Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx who, like, idolized Ginger Rogers, I knew and felt that there was no way that I would ever be seen as that.
EY: Fazil’s was significant in the development of tap, specifically in New York City, for many artists.
AC: Fazil’s was this magical studio on Forty‑Seventh Street and Eighth Avenue that you could describe as a little dark and a little rickety. But it was incredible because it was a space where percussive dancers were able to go in and really work out. They could go in there for, I think it was $8 an hour, like, something super‑economical.
You’d wait for your turn to get into that room, and people would come out of there sweating, and then you would just go in and do your own workout. And everywhere in those three or four floors were soloists and people gathering to work with one other person. There were classes with flamencos, too. It was great because the spirit and the energy of the place was filled with discipline and people reaching for something.
I miss that so much because there were no auditions. Nobody was saying, Oh, you can’t tap here, or There’s yoga underneath you so you can’t dance here after a certain time. There were just no limitations. You went there to really dance. I miss that for sure. Percussive artists have been marginalized from these dance spaces, and it’s a crime. We are literally cutting off the cord to an art form as it relates to other people seeing and experiencing our work. It’s important to educate people on why it’s important to have, for example, wood floors—because [marley board] hurts our hips, because of the integrity of the sound. All of these reasons should be heard and it’s important.
EY: Tell us about teachers who were meaningful to you and perhaps mentors whose sense of not just technique, not just the dance, but how to build a career, how to sustain a career, may have influenced you.
AC: Gregory Hines became one of my dear mentors. Whenever he’d come to New York, he’d call me and we’d go dance. I think of him every day. I am so grateful to have had him around because he, to me, was the epitome of generosity and love. For me specifically, championing our development and our growth even though at the time, I mean, I had been dancing for, like, maybe three or four years, but I could just see and feel his support and his love. I am so thankful to him! He was such a giant of a celebrity who, as an artist, really took the time to invest in young people. It was a really formative experience and not only did he do it for us personally, but he did it for the entire art form. I think a large part of who I am as an artist is because of him, and I would say his influence on me is more about how he was as a person.
EY: Plus he was an all‑around performer.
AC: He was masterful. His light was very bright. Ted Levy was another one of my mentors. In the 1990s, he was running what we called Funk U—Funk University. It was a training ground for young men of color to enter Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk because at the time there weren’t many people who could really do that work. Nobody was really understanding improvisation and musicality, and the technique of the work that Savion [Glover] was doing. And so Ted was tasked with training young promising men. He saw me hanging around that studio on Lafayette across from the Public Theater, and I showed up enough times that he was, like, Okay, you can come in, and he allowed me to be a part of it. Ted held us to a standard. We would work on technique. We worked on combinations. We worked on improvisation, performance, history. We watched footage. He gave us so much guidance, and we were sweaty and tired and we loved it, you know.
EY: Is there something about tap that you wish more people were aware of or could appreciate more?
AC: It’s serious business, it’s fun, and it’s entertaining. It’s exciting, and it’s enchanting and magical. And it’s also a highly sophisticated form requiring a lot of commitment, a lot of discipline, and to do it well, it requires a lot of talent. There’s this energy that has transferred from King Rastus Brown to John Bubbles to Bill Robinson to Baby Laurence. There’s no way anybody can become a truly excellent tap dancer without delving into its connection to jazz music.
EY: Absolutely. What are you looking at and getting excited about in the tap field today? What’s new and exciting and interesting?
AC: Finally, women are being presented consistently in these institutions. It can’t be overstated. When I think about the Jeni Le Gons, the Lois Brights, the Louise Madisons, the Juanita Pitts, all of those women who didn’t get the same opportunity that we have gotten because of racial discrimination, because of gender inequality, because of politics at the time, it’s a real blessing for us to be able to enjoy these moments. I used to feel guilty because I felt like I’ve had a great career and it’s been fun. I used to feel bad thinking that we don’t have any footage of Louise Madison, that we only have one clip of Lois Bright—who was brilliant—that we have one small clip of Juanita Pitts, who was equally talented, and you could see that in thirty seconds. I can’t change that, but what I can do is bring them with me everywhere I go. That’s why I always speak their names.
EY: Lastly, tell me about your fellowship at Harvard University.
AC: I have been named a Radcliffe fellow for the 2019‑2020 academic season. This is the first time for me, as an artist, to be able to focus for ten months time. To be paid to work on your work is a special luxury that I’ve never been afforded. I’m very much looking forward to it. I plan on using every resource I possibly can at Harvard while I’m there and delving into writing another theatrical work. I’m probably the first tap dancer to be given that honor, and I’m so thrilled.