Speaker 1: This is me.
Speaker 2: So my entry point to it was Ginger Rogers, but
Speaker 2: really this is my legacy.
Speaker 1: This art form is my legacy.
Speaker 3: From futro media and pox. It's Latino Usa. I'm Maria
Speaker 3: nor Posa today, a yodel Cacil, the decorated Afro Latina
Speaker 3: tap dancer and how her art is part of her legacy.
Speaker 3: For Ayodelic Cascill, tap dancing is not just a series
Speaker 3: of steps, it's magic. It's when she feels the most
Speaker 3: free and is able to connect to her cultural heritage.
Speaker 3: The Bronx native was born to a Puerto Rican mother
Speaker 3: and a Black father. She discovered tap through the silver
Speaker 3: screen at a young age, transfixed by Fred Astaire and
Speaker 3: Ginger Rogers, so much so that she started recreating their
Speaker 3: move in her Bronx bedroom. But it wasn't until she
Speaker 3: was a sophomore at the NYU Tish School of the
Speaker 3: Arts that she took her first tap dancing class, and
Speaker 3: she's been dancing ever since. During her almost three decade
Speaker 3: long career, Ayodetta has received a number of accolades and awards,
Speaker 3: despite the field being dominated by male dancers. Ayodette was
Speaker 3: the first woman to be invited to dance for Savion
Speaker 3: Glover's Not Your Ordinary Tap Dancers group, and she's performed
Speaker 3: in places like the White House, Radio City Music Hall,
Speaker 3: and Carnegie Hall. In twenty nineteen, she was featured in
Speaker 3: a series of forever stamps from the US Post Office,
Speaker 3: the Black Heritage Stamp Series. A documentary about Ayodeeda's development
Speaker 3: as an artist, titled Tapping Into Our Past Tapping Into
Speaker 3: Our Future, premiered in twenty twenty two. In that same year,
Speaker 3: Ayodeeda's tap choreography in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl
Speaker 3: earned her a Drama Desque nomination. Her work calls attention
Speaker 3: to how tap dancing is an expression of identity, culture, language,
Speaker 3: and communication, but also to the forgotten history of black
Speaker 3: tap dancers. Here's Iodlica said as she taps us through
Speaker 3: her journey in a story we first aired in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one.
Speaker 1: My name is Iodele Cassell.
Speaker 2: I am a tap dancer, choreographer, actor, lover of tesla
Speaker 2: and stake. My name means joy has arrived and it
Speaker 2: is Nigerian Yoruba.
Speaker 1: My father named me. It's one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2: I am a native New Yorker, proud Bronx native. When
Speaker 2: I was nine, my mom sent me to Puerto Rico
Speaker 2: to live with my grandparents.
Speaker 1: What I do remember the most, at least for.
Speaker 2: That initial landing, was feeling like, how am I going
Speaker 2: to communicate?
Speaker 1: I didn't speak the language at all. I knew one word.
Speaker 1: I knew how to say ola, and that was it.
Speaker 2: My grandparents didn't speak English that well, and my grandmother
Speaker 2: would teach me with like a letter stencil, who doosday
Speaker 2: squadro one thing at a time. While I remember struggling
Speaker 2: with the language, there was a seamless transition of when
Speaker 2: you just are speaking it fluently. And I was there
Speaker 2: until I was fifteen. I was supposed to be there
Speaker 2: for one year and ended up being six. At the
Speaker 2: age of seventeen, I was a senior in high school.
Speaker 2: My English teacher she started a course called history with
Speaker 2: the movies. That's when I first saw FREDI standing Gerrogers.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I was in lovely Van Hook.
Speaker 3: I know, you were.
Speaker 1: This world that seemed really interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Like I thought Fred and Ginger were like magic, so graceful,
Speaker 2: and they had such great chemistry.
Speaker 1: It was just like it was beautiful to watch.
Speaker 2: There's something in the format of a musical that is
Speaker 2: sort of fantastical, and as somebody who just did not
Speaker 2: grow up seeing that, it was really intriguing. And then
Speaker 2: of course tap dancing, if you don't know what goes
Speaker 2: into it, it is a little bit like magic. It's
Speaker 2: like you see people like moving their feet and all
Speaker 2: of these sounds are coming out. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: be able to move my feet in the way that
Speaker 2: they did. And I remember like I would go home
Speaker 2: after school and I'd go to the library to like
Speaker 2: rent their movies, and I just close the door and
Speaker 2: try to move like they were.
Speaker 1: What if I could do that?
Speaker 2: What if I could be Ginger fully knowing that there's
Speaker 2: no way that this black and Puerto Rican girl was
Speaker 2: gonna ever be considered anything like Ginger Rogers, because I
Speaker 2: didn't see people like me who were on screen like that,
Speaker 2: especially during those thirties and forties and fifties. So I
Speaker 2: remember just sort of that being a fantasy. And then
Speaker 2: I was an acting major at YU and my sophomore
Speaker 2: year they offered two movement classes that the actors had
Speaker 2: to take, and it was tap dancing and tai chi,
Speaker 2: And I was like oh yeah, Oh my God, Like, finally,
Speaker 2: this is going to be my chance to really get
Speaker 2: to move my feet in the way that I saw
Speaker 2: Ginger Rogers doing. So I signed up for tap immediately,
Speaker 2: and I even got like some shoes that looked like
Speaker 2: one of her shoes in the movie. I went to
Speaker 2: pay Less shoe source, because you know, the dance school
Speaker 2: has cheesy shoes. I got these really cool like heel
Speaker 2: suede shoess and I got them tapped up, and I
Speaker 2: felt like I walked into my first class in style.
Speaker 1: And I was so happy to do my first shuffle.
Speaker 1: I was living my life.
Speaker 2: About a year after that, I met someone who was
Speaker 2: a freshman and he was actually a real hood for
Speaker 2: His name is Bookarie Wilder.
Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, you Tap dance. I was like yeah.
Speaker 1: He was like, oh, we should go jam. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go.
Speaker 2: Jam. He took me to that studio and I'm putting
Speaker 2: up my shoes with my shuffle hopstep for lap ball change,
Speaker 2: just all of the joy and the spirit in the world.
Speaker 1: As I'm lacing up, he starts to warm up. I
Speaker 1: heard him go I had never heard that ever. I
Speaker 1: had heard Dad Dee d d day. So I realized
Speaker 1: very quickly that I did not know what I was doing.
Speaker 2: It was a really formative time and really impactful because
Speaker 2: he was like, oh, wait a minute, you know Gregory Hines, right,
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, I don't know him.
Speaker 1: Do you know, like Sammy Davis Junior. I'm like, god,
Speaker 1: I didn't know know the Nicholas Brothers. No, he said,
Speaker 1: tap dancing is.
Speaker 2: Not just a series of steps, and it's not combinations
Speaker 2: that you do in dance class. This is a real
Speaker 2: form of expression because it comes from you. He's like,
Speaker 2: you don't even need music. He taught me that this
Speaker 2: art form was really rooted in the history of black
Speaker 2: people in this country, that it.
Speaker 1: Is my legacy.
Speaker 2: I think this art form of tap dancing speaks really
Speaker 2: directly to the history of this country and lands squarely
Speaker 2: at the intersection of race and gender and appropriation. And
Speaker 2: we talk about the development of the slave codes of
Speaker 2: seventeen forty, for example, born out of the rebellion that
Speaker 2: black people in this country they knew rhythm. They were
Speaker 2: so connected to their power in that way that they
Speaker 2: could start revolts across plantations through communicating with specific rhythms
Speaker 2: and so when that was discovered, laws were enacted in
Speaker 2: this country to basically ban them.
Speaker 1: What I love about that story.
Speaker 2: Even though it's completely steeped in oppression and a dehumanization,
Speaker 2: is that the spirit of a human being, in the
Speaker 2: spirit of black people, that what happens when somebody attempts
Speaker 2: to take away your mode of expression and to take
Speaker 2: away your instrument, you find another way. You're not gonna
Speaker 2: give me a drama. I can make sound with my feet,
Speaker 2: I can make sound with my body, I can make.
Speaker 1: Sound with my hands.
Speaker 2: The one thing you learn very quickly as a tap
Speaker 2: dance student is that it thrives on your individual expression.
Speaker 2: If I could describe it for somebody who doesn't do it,
Speaker 2: is like if you have an impulse and then naturally
Speaker 2: something starts to build and you get ideas that are
Speaker 2: in rhythm form and your feet are able to communicate that.
Speaker 2: So we have steps that have a different number of notes.
Speaker 2: For example, a step is just one note. A shuffle
Speaker 2: has two sounds, shuffule one two. A cramp roll has
Speaker 2: four sounds. It starts to boil up into a rhythmic pattern,
Speaker 2: and it's influenced by really your upbringing. I grew up
Speaker 2: listening to Hector Lavo to Ray Boretto, and I grew
Speaker 2: up listening to Orestis and Fania All Stars. And I
Speaker 2: also grew up in the nineties, which is like the
Speaker 2: height of hip hop. Everything that has entered your ear
Speaker 2: has become part of your makeup, is available to you
Speaker 2: when you get this impulse to move.
Speaker 1: So if I had sad, Sad, dad, and then I can.
Speaker 2: Go on and on and on. But all of these
Speaker 2: things just live there and they are available to you
Speaker 2: to come out in whichever way that.
Speaker 1: You so choose.
Speaker 2: I think it was the beginning of a journey of
Speaker 2: really getting to know myself as a human being. But
Speaker 2: what made me think I can do this forever as
Speaker 2: a career was when I saw Bringing the Noise in
Speaker 2: the Funk at the Public Theater in ninety five. Bringing
Speaker 2: the Noise, Bringing the Funk basically told the history of
Speaker 2: Black people in this country through tap dancing from the
Speaker 2: Middle Passage all the way through current times.
Speaker 1: It was revolutionary because it was the.
Speaker 2: First time that tap dancing was seen and heard in
Speaker 2: a way that was not common like the way that
Speaker 2: we think of tap dancing as like timesteps and everybody
Speaker 2: in Unison with arm choreography, kind of like forty second.
Speaker 1: Street type thing.
Speaker 2: It was really a true authentic representation of how the
Speaker 2: form was living in America. And when I went to
Speaker 2: that show and I saw young black actors, young black
Speaker 2: tap dancers really on stage like having a story that
Speaker 2: was told through them at a theater that was around
Speaker 2: the corner from my school, That's when I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: I want to do that. And not only do I
Speaker 2: want to do that, but I want to do it
Speaker 2: to the best of my ability and I want to
Speaker 2: dance with the best. And that is when I first
Speaker 2: saw a way to do this long term. When I
Speaker 2: started to dance professionally and I happened to come up
Speaker 2: at a time when the focus was on a lot
Speaker 2: of young men.
Speaker 1: The audience members at.
Speaker 2: The end of the show would say to me, I
Speaker 2: did not know that women's have danced, or they'd be
Speaker 2: like you, girl, you dance like a man. They would
Speaker 2: say this as though they were giving me compliments. So
Speaker 2: it was that moment of constantly hearing other people say
Speaker 2: those things that made me look for the women that
Speaker 2: look like me. Because I knew about ginger rogers and
Speaker 2: Eleanor Powell and Vooby Keeler, and I knew about all
Speaker 2: those women, but I didn't know of Jenny Legan. I
Speaker 2: did not know of Lois Bright, I did not know
Speaker 2: about Juanita Pits. I started to call out these names
Speaker 2: just as I was learning them, and I would just
Speaker 2: say Cora La Red, Juanita Pits, Louise Madison. I feel
Speaker 2: like I can't change the past. What I can do
Speaker 2: is I can bring them into my experience so that
Speaker 2: when people see me tap dance, they understand that I
Speaker 2: didn't just get plopped here, and there is a legacy
Speaker 2: of women behind me who were doing it and who
Speaker 2: should be named and recognized. It has become a practice
Speaker 2: for me over the last twenty five years. I hold
Speaker 2: them with me anytime that I'm dancing. Then we could
Speaker 2: talk about appropriation, how a lot of the white dancers
Speaker 2: were royalistic in these black communities and taking their work
Speaker 2: and performing it while black people did not have the
Speaker 2: right and ability to perform themselves. Even when we talk
Speaker 2: about the silver Screen, we know Fredistang and Gerrogers, and
Speaker 2: we celebrate Freda Stair very easily, but we don't know
Speaker 2: that one of his teachers was John Bubbles, who was
Speaker 2: a black dancer who actually revolutionized the art form by
Speaker 2: dropping his heels into the ground and allowing more.
Speaker 1: Notes to be played with his feet.
Speaker 2: We don't know about Jenny Leaghan, a black tap dancer
Speaker 2: who's actually the first black woman to dance with Bill Robinson,
Speaker 2: who was a huge star at the time. But we
Speaker 2: know Shirley Temple, we know oh Sammy Davis Junior and
Speaker 2: Jimmy Slide and Buster Brown and Chuck Green and all wonderful,
Speaker 2: beautiful tap dancers, but we don't know the women that
Speaker 2: were their contemporaries, their colleagues who were also trying to
Speaker 2: work in the same way. Really, the one of my
Speaker 2: missions is to really transform the way people view tap dancing.
Speaker 2: So I'm happy that Chasing Magic kind of allowed that
Speaker 2: window into that. We were invited by Aaron Maddox at
Speaker 2: the Joyce Theater. Aaron reached out and said, Hey, do
Speaker 2: you want to do something for our virtual season? And
Speaker 2: I was like, I haven't seen any of my friends,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, how are we going to do this?
Speaker 2: I sent tapes, just video recordings of some choreography, and
Speaker 2: we had one day of rehearsal and then two days
Speaker 2: of actual shooting and that was it.
Speaker 1: So it came together like magic, actually very quickly.
Speaker 2: But because we had really wonderful, committed and focused and
Speaker 2: generous dancers, we made it happen. And Chasing Magic, you'll
Speaker 2: see solos, duets, trios, You'll see full group numbers. We're
Speaker 2: gonna see numbers that are a cappella, numbers that swing
Speaker 2: Latin jazz.
Speaker 1: You're gonna hear an African and six' eight rhythm just
Speaker 1: done with our.
Speaker 2: Feet we're gonna dance to a soft shoe and a
Speaker 2: waltz and we're gonna like really hit it. Hard What
Speaker 2: i'm trying to do is just show really the depth
Speaker 2: of the art form and how much we.
Speaker 1: Can accomplish with just two pieces of metal on our.
Speaker 2: FEET i Think Chasing magic is a celebration of, collaboration, friendship, art,
Speaker 2: life honoring our, experiences honoring our, history and just like
Speaker 2: how all those elements sort of come together to really
Speaker 2: create these little magical. Moments i've read a lot of
Speaker 2: things lately about agism and, dance and one of the
Speaker 2: things That i'm really inspired by about tap dancing is
Speaker 2: that we dance until we no longer, can whether you're
Speaker 2: into your eighties or your. NINETIES i grew up knowing
Speaker 2: that the older you, get the better you, get and
Speaker 2: So i've never felt, like, OH i got to get
Speaker 2: make sure that to get all my things Before i'm
Speaker 2: thirty or Before i'm. Forty IF i feel like tap
Speaker 2: dancing is one of those art forms that it's like,
Speaker 2: wine you get better with, AGE.
Speaker 1: I think one of the.
Speaker 2: Things THAT i have been building towards now is amplifying the.
Speaker 2: Message What i've been working so diligently and so many
Speaker 2: of my peers is for people to understand that tap
Speaker 2: is more than, entertainment that tap dancing is more than
Speaker 2: just people dancing in. UNISON i want people to know
Speaker 2: that tap dancing is a really sophisticated and beautiful, expression musical.
Speaker 2: Expression it thrives off of music and. Freedom you're connected
Speaker 2: to something else that nobody can really take away from.
Speaker 3: You ayodeli hopes to keep expanding people's understanding of tap.
Speaker 3: Dancing she wants to bring the art form to a larger.
Speaker 3: Audience this episode was produced By Maria eskinka and edited
Speaker 3: By Met Trevlon. Shahi it was mixed By Julia, carusso
Speaker 3: with engineering support From Jay. Grubin The LATINO usa team
Speaker 3: also Includes Roxanna, Guire Fernando, Chavari Jessica, Ellis Victoria, Strada,
Speaker 3: Dominiquinestrosa renaldo Leanoz, Junior Stephanie, Lebau Andrea Lopez, Grusado Luis,
Speaker 3: Luna Marta, Martinez Dasha, Sandoval Lor saudi And Nancy, Trujillo Benileei,
Speaker 3: Ramirez Marlon, Bishop Maria garcia and myself are co executive
Speaker 3: producers And i'm your. Host Marianno. Rossa join us again
Speaker 3: on our next. Episode in the, Meantime i'll see you
Speaker 3: on social media and as, always notte Maa, yes Lunga.
Speaker 4: Jao LATINO usa is made possible in part by The Ford,
Speaker 4: foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change,
Speaker 4: worldwide The JOHN.
Speaker 1: D And CATHERINE.
Speaker 4: T MacArthur, foundation and The Heising Simons foundation unlocking, knowledge
Speaker 4: opportunity and possibilities more at hsfoundation dot.
Speaker 2: Org i've rarely, stretched And i'm not proud of. That
Speaker 2: and whoever's listening and wants to be a tab, answer
Speaker 2: don't take that. Advice please stretch and roll