LaVaughn Robinson Biography
LaVaughan Robinson [biography]
Dates: 1927-2008
Birth Date: Feb 9, 1927
Death Date: Jan 22, 2008
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Place of Death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
LaVaughan Robinson, virtuoso tap dancer, Robinson perfected a high speed, low to the ground, a cappella style of dance that was characterized by elegance, precision, and clarity of sound was born and raised in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of seven brothers and seven sisters. His mother, Catherine Griffin Robinson, taught him his first tap dancing step, the plain time step, at the age of seven.
He grew up dancing on the street corners of Philadelphia, developing his skills through highly competitive tap challenges and watching the best of local tap dancers. During the 1920s and 1930s in Philadelphia, Robinson remembers that African-American children and teenagers, mostly males, danced on street corners for recreation, and whenever they could attract a crowd they danced and sang and the audience threw money in return. Dancing first with a "tramp band" of washboards and kazoos on the streets, he moved on to busking on local street corners. The elements of successful busking consisted of the ability to catch the attention of passersby, build a crowd, and then pass the hat. The competition required fierce demonstration of dancing prowess, like a gunfighter riding into town and challenging the local champion, with the winners getting better corners. The ultimate corner in Philadelphia was at Broad and South Street. The better the dance ability, the nearer to Broad Street the dancer would be permitted busk. Although Robinson had no formal dance training, his competitive zeal at the corner of Broad and South Street led to his owning that corner by the age of thirteen, where he also danced and played in a tramp band (washboard, washtub bass, and kazoo). Robinson earned enough money by busking to buy his own clothes, contribute to paying for the family groceries, and to go to the Earle Theater. There he saw all the great tap dancers of the day-- Bill Robinson, Condos Brothers (Steve, Frank, Nick); Baby Laurence, who performed with Count Basie Orchestra; Nicholas Brothers (Fayard and Harold) with Dolly Dawn and the Dawn Patrol; and Robinson's particular favorite, Teddy Hale, with Louis Jordan. Robinson admired Hale's rendition of "Begin the Beguine" and particularly liked Hale's improvisational style, in which on successive performances, he performed entirely different dances, as opposed to a fixed act, the norm at the time. At this formative age, Robinson met Henry Meadows, an older dancer who took an interest in Robinson, and taught him a close to the ground, fast step called a paddle and roll, which was to be an important element in Robinson's mature style. Meadows partnered with Robinson, on and off, over a period of 40 years, performing over the eastern United States and Canada, including the Palace Theatre and Apollo in New York, Club De Lisa in Chicago, and a regular gig at Palumbo's in South Philly.
After Robinson graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia, he served in the Army from 1945-1947. After separating from the Army, he began his career in Philadelphia with booking agents Eddie Suez and Bernie Rothbard of the Suez/Rothbard Agency. As Meadows preferred staying in Philadelphia, Robinson partnered with Howard Blow, a fast tempo tap dancer, and learned from Bobby Jones, another high-speed dancer from Philly. Robinson also danced with Eddie Sledge and Tony Lopez when he worked for Eddie Smith, a booking agent who handled only trios and quartets. Around 1946, Robinson began performing as a soloist with the big bands of Tommy Dorsey, Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, groups that always traveled with a tap dancer or a tap dance team. He also toured with singers Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and performed internationally in clubs, theaters and on radio and television. Robinson performed in a close rhythms style, avoiding splits, jumps, and flips of the style of the Nicholas Brothers, after suffering injuries to his legs. As tastes in music changed and the era of Swing came to an end, Robinson had the opportunity to work with John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. At the time, Robinson worked from music charts. Coltrane said: "Oh, I can play that," but he did not play it as it was on the page. That improvisational style proved incompatible with Robinson's dancing. Robinson said to Coltrane: "Well, look, I don't need the music, because I'm dancing the way I like to dance and the way I wanted to dance." Robinson focused his repertoire on tap as music, "sound tap," that made accompaniment a redundant distraction.
Robinson lived in Boston from 1965 to 1973, then returned to Philadelphia where he began rehearsing at nights in the basement of the Neff Building with Jerry Tapps, whose daytime job was the building's elevator operator. They developed a routine, "Telephone," which was a series of call-and-response exchanges. It was Tapps who encouraged Robinson to create his signature solo dance, "Artistry in Taps" (also known as "For Drummers Only").
Had Robinson attended dance school in the 1930s, he would have learned a slower Broadway style of tap dancing. Coming from a street tradition that emphasized speed and flash, his mature style developed from close observation and imitation of the dancers of his day with particular interest in fast dancing. Robinson's encyclopedic knowledge of tap dancers, and his sense of the importance of the history, led him to re-create such dances as Bill Robinson's "Waltz Clog, in tribute to Pat Rooney, and Robinson's "Impersonation of Bill Bailey impersonating Bill "Bojangles" Robinson imitating Peg Leg Bates." In that tap work he opens with a basic "Bojangles" time step before jumping into a one-legged Peg Leg Bates step. Known as having the fastest taps in the business, Robinson was a master of the paddle-and-roll step, a combination of heel and toe taps sounded as sixteenth notes creating a drum roll sound. From that one basic step, Robinson was able to create an endless number of variations. Fundamentally constructing compositions on the paddle, he subdivide the quarter note, macro beat into four sixteenth note beats, thus allowing him to subdivide the beat further. While most other tap compositions originate from swing eighth note beats, commonly through the flap or shuffle, the paddle-and-roll style allowed dancers to subdivide the quarter note, macro beat, into triplet eighth note beats. Employing his innovative subdivision scheme, even when Robinson used patterns common to many tap dancers, the steps fit into these complicated structures on the microscopic scale. Combinations that would be slow and broad gestures in other works, quickly became quick, fleeting details in highly complex, intricate, infectious compositions.
In 1980, Robinson joined the faculty of the Philadelphia's University of the Arts where he taught a generation of tap dancers a series of études developed over the course of his career. In this time period, he also danced in a trio with Sandra Janoff, a teacher, and Germaine Ingram, an attorney. Later, he formed a long-time partnership with Ingram, performing on the 1989 PBS Special Tap Dancing in America, hosted by Gregory Hines.
That same year, Robinson was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment of the Arts; in 1992 he received Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Choreography and Performance. In 2000, Robinson won the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Governor's Arts Award for Artist of the Year, and in 2005, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia named him Distinguished Professor, a title he held until his death. Much in demand, and most beloved by all his students, Robinson was a frequent featured performer throughout the U.S. and danced in Africa, Europe, and Russia.
[Sources: Constance Valis Hill, "LaVaughan Robinson," Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History (1996); Cheryl Willis, Tap Dance: Memories and Issues of African-American Women Who Performed between 1930-1950. Unpublished PhD. Dissertation, Temple University (1991)]
