All About Jane
Jane Goldberg, the tap dancer with angst, reigns over a kingdom of music and dance lovers, and writers⁄storytellers. Called by her late friend, Jackie Raven, the “Jason Kidd” of tap, Jane is known for her assists, a keen observer⁄player⁄insider⁄outsider of the entire court. Her late friend, Gregory Hines claimed once she single-footedly
pioneered the tap revival of the mid 1970’s, through her advocacy and background in journalism that brought public attention to the art once again.
With her ancestors Bathsheba Goldberg and the Wandering Shoes leading the way, Jane's roots date back to Biblical times, with matzoth dancing, the predecessor of sand dancing. Bathsheba and the Wandering Shoes travel the world over and in Spain laid down The Yiddish Roots of Flamenco, and in Trinidad, the Hebraic roots of Calypso. What was left of the tribe of wanderers gathered in New York and New Orleans, put metal on their shoes, and created what is now known as American tap dancing.
Some of her formative years were spent as a muckraking journalist for the BU News. She graduated from Boston University with a BA in political science. In 1972, the tap dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers infected her imagination. Soon the virus spread throughout most of her body/mind/spirit and she began to study tap.
At Boston University her professor Howard Zinn said, If You can't liberate the world, you must liberate the ground upon which you stand.
Goldberg listened, gave up her curlers forever, and began to liberate the ground. She approached tap with a political sensibility and began reviving interest in the art.
She started by ferreting out many of the remaining tap giants of the 20th century, apprenticing herself to them, interviewing, documenting, and putting them back on stage. She performed with some of these greats in venues untouched by tapping feet. Her first presenters were Max Gordon of The Village Vanguard, NY's premiere jazz club, The Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia and The Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
The American Dance Festival and Jacob's Pillow presented Goldberg's Changing Times Tap, her company in 1978, venues where tap hadn't been performed in 18 and 37 years respectively. In 1986
Goldberg went solo with her act, Rhythm & Schmooze. With Sarah Safford, she developed an act called, Tapping and Talking Dirty, and later the two brought Dorothy Wasserman in for The Rhythm Method involving original tap and comedy skits. Goldberg also produced an all women's tap show, Sole Sisters featuring tap's grandes dames and prima tapperinas.
Have feet, will travel, Goldberg has tapped on the tops of bars to the live music of blue chip artist Larry Rivers, in Paris with the late Steve Lacy, and as a Fulbright Scholar to India twice. She carried her shoes to the streets of Trivandrum, the five stars of Bombay, the women's collective of Madras, the shores of Goa, and the bowels of Calcutta.
She is the inventor of tap-a-gram™ and has been tapping and typing her life away since Bathsheba first began matzoth dancing at the foot of Mt. Sinai.
Shoot Me While I'm Happy
LIMITED EDITION!!!!!
A bonus DVD with By Word of Foot Tap Masters Pass On Their Tradition
(1980) plus excerpts of Rhythm & Schmooze
will be included, if you order the book through www.janegoldberg.org
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