Changing Times Tap Dancing Co., Inc.

Changing Times Tap Dancing Co., Inc., a not-for profit, was incorporated in 1979, an umbrella for all things tap. Originally it was set up as a home for old hoofers, to preserve and create new tap. Changing Times Tap refers to not only time signatures changing in tap, but that times have changed since tap was underground during its Drought of the 1950's and 1960's and hence a revival of interest was afoot.

By Word Of Foot

By Word of Foot: the documented festivals Changing Times Tap organized in 1980, 1982, and 1985 to bring tap masters together with students. While most of the old greats have left the planet, a whole new generation of tap dancers was able to study with many of them thanks to the pioneering efforts of CTT. Tap festivals blossom now throughout the country and Europe, thanks to By Word of Foot. There now are maps on taps, as people young and old travel to continue to move the art forward. Funded originally by the National Endowment for the Arts, these festivals paved the way for tap’s continuity.

Click here to watch By Word of Foot: Gregory Hines

Click here to watch By Word of Foot: John Bubbles

Footprint: News on Tap

Footprint: News on Tap Another pioneering effort on the part of CTT, pre-desktop publishing, Footprint, contains interviews with Gregory Hines and Tommy Tune in its premiere issue, cartoons, photographs, and current events. Footprint introduced tap dancers to each other when desktop publishing and email were on the unforeseen horizon.

Click here to read Footprint Vol 1 Number 1

Click here to read Footprint Vol 1 Number 2

Shoot Me While I’m Happy: The Musical

Shoot Me While I’m Happy: the musical. Goldberg and company produced revues throughout the country beginning in 1978. Some of these shows are It's About Time, Lost in the Shuffle, The Depression ’s Back and So Is Tap, Old, New, Borrowed and Bluesy, Sole Sisters, The New Sole Sisters, The Rhythm Method, Tapping and Talking Dirty, Tapping and Rapping to name several. These productions consisted of old and young hoofers, black and white, male and female, in the vanguard of the multicultural movement of the 1980's. With vintage and new choreography, these shows were forerunners to Goldberg's Rhythm & Schmooze. What distinguished these shows from other on goings of the times were the plots, created often by the team of Stewart Alter, Daisy Edmondson, with input by Goldberg and her colleague, Sarah Safford. Audiences embraced some of the campy but often real-life plots. The story-lines also allowed the old masters to act. Acting being something they rarely due to discrimination.

The Institute for Tap Studies

The Institute for Tap Studies: On the horizon. This will consist of a crash pad for hoofers, a floor for research and books on tap, and a floor for jamming the yams.

The Archives

The Archives: Labor of Love, created as a miniature tap hall of fame, full of photographs, audiotapes, videotapes, DVDs, clips and articles, books, tap shoes, taps, vintage everything.

Rhythm & Schmooze

Rhythm & Schmooze: Jane Goldberg’s one woman comedy/tap show reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town among other publications. She is also the subject of three Stan Mack cartoons.

Click here to see an excerpt from Rhythm and Schmooze

The Rhythm Method

The Rhythm Method: Jane Goldberg, Sarah Safford, and Dorothy Wasserman tapping and talking their lives away as modern women. Includes the groundbreaking My Vagina to Run DMC written by Safford, before The Vagina Monologues hit the stage.

Tap-a-gram™

Tap-a-gram™: Goldberg’s singing/tapping telegram service. Have shoes, have floor will travel to your next party, fun occasion.

Shortcut to Tap-a-Gram™ info

The Jackie Raven Folk and Outsider Art Walls, The Molly Goldberg Knitting Factory Museum, and The Jack Goldberg Comedy Collection

The Jackie Raven Folk and Outsider Art Walls, The Molly Goldberg Knitting Factory Museum, and The Jack Goldberg Comedy Collection, all presently housed at 310 Greenwich St, Tribeca, NYC, these collections include rare art, sweaters, and books on comedy by Jane’s late friend, Jackie Raven, and her parents, Jack and Molly.

The Feets-On Lecture

Jane Goldberg is available for lecture-demonstrations to educate the world to tap’s complex story. Because it is oral history, and because it’s still in its infancy, tap history has been rarely documented.

The Jane Goldberg Feets-On lecture will include a lot of truth and consequences, anecdotal and subjective/but knowledgable statements about "the" story of tap. The important thing to know is Jane was "there" for the last of the old school masters who were in their sixties and seventies and still had their "feet" intact and stories to tell.

The history of tap is a complicated one because of deep-seated race relations and very little early documentation.

There are good books to try to find out some of the oral history. These books include, Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing, by Mark Knowles, Class Act: The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins," by Jaqui Malone, Brotherhood in Rhythm about the Nicholas Brothers by Constance Valis Hill, "TAP! THe Greatest Tap Dance Stars and their Stories,"by Rusty Frank, Acia Gray's, Anita Feldman's and Bob Audy's "How to" books on tap.

Others: Brenda Bufalino's memoir, Tapping the Source, The Book of Tap by Jerry Ames, and the 'Bible' to us all, Jazz Dance, The Story of American Vernacular Dance, by Marshall and Jean Stearns. There are many more and those who've written them, please get the titles to me and I'll enter them.

Other books I recommend that aren't strictly tap but are good books: Marcia Siegel's latest book on Twyla Tharp: Howling Near Heaven, Deborah Jowitt’s Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theatre and Mindy Aloff's Dance Anecdotes, all terrific writers on dance who are simpatico to tap dancing. There are lots of others, I'm sorry to have left out. Memory is beginning to play tricks on me. But I'm totally open to mentioning anything I've unintentionally left out.

Gregory Hines has provided me invaluable info in our twenty-five year old complex friendship from which I'll draw, since he was definitely there with the greats since his early childhood.

The contemporary history of tap, Molly McQuade wrote, is the history of individual dancers. That includes writers, too and people who have followed the tap life.

If you have any questions, please email

woodshedproductions
@yahoo.com