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Man With a Mission Taps Into Chicago - Lane Alexander's Chicago Human Rhythm Project
Dance Magazine, August, 2001 by Ann Barzel
LANE ALEXANDER AND THE HUMAN RHYTHM PROJECT
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LANE ALEXANDER IS A MAN WITH A MISSION: TO SWAY GRANTING AGENCIES and audiences into recognizing tap dancing as a genuine art, worthy of funding and a home. Thanks to him, Chicago enjoys the Human Rhythm Project, an annual celebration of tap and allied dance forms that Alexander co-founded and directs. * On the eve of the eleventh Chicago Human Rhythm Project, he said, "I realized at the beginning of my career as a dancer that tap dancing was a homeless art, nomadic and poorly supported. It was not accepted academically until relatively recently. Yet the CHRP celebrates tap dance as the quintessentially American art form." * Alexander is a professional tap dancer, a virtuoso, hailed in the press as a combination of dance legends Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. In addition to his American appearances, he appears regularly in solo concerts in European cities--Paris, Brussels, Zurich, Stuttgart, Milan, Helsinki--where he also conducts workshops in the art of tap dancing. In Chicago, he is especially busy as a teacher. He has taught at Lou Conte's Hubbard Street studios, at the Dance Center of Columbia College, and at the Giordano Dance Center. Currently, he teaches as an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University. As a choreographer, Alexander has created dances for companies in Chicago, Minneapolis, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and throughout Europe.
Alexander is a fair-haired, slim dancer whose easy grace belies his 40-plus years and whose broad vocabulary of carefully chosen words marks him as an educator. It is clear that he has thought long and logically about the history and present problems of tap dance, and he knows how to express his thoughts. He often meets the public in the self-appointed role of advocate for tap.
Alexander was born to musician parents in Fort Worth, Texas, where tap lessons at age 7 with teacher Laine Johns, "a tiny Welsh woman with lightning feet," he says, captured his interest. He quit, however, when the family moved to Georgia, because he didn't want to be "the only boy--again." Instead, he studied percussion with his stepfather, a professional musician with a fourteen-piece jazz orchestra.
He later enrolled as a pre-law major at the University of Texas, but found working as a book binder in the law library dreary. Unhappy and depressed, he was watching the Tony Awards show on television and saw a dance number. "I could do that," he said. "But you're not, are you?" replied his mother.
He quit the university and started studying again at the Dance Workshop in San Antonio. Studio Director Susan Beil Connally helped him get a scholarship to a workshop taught by jazz master Gus Giordano in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. Both Chicago and the classes in jazz dance suited Alexander, who was accepted in David Pusczewicz's Chicago-based dance company. This highly respected modern troupe danced an art-conscious repertoire in Chicago and during a Midwestern tour. Modern dance was fine as an introduction to a professional career, but when offered a chance to tap dance professionally, Alexander joined the Texas-based Austin on Tap, a concert group that toured widely. He was happy to be tapping. When the tour ended, he was invited to join the Toronto-based National Tap Dance Company of Canada. This company, directed by William Orlowski, performed to symphonic music. Those accompaniments instilled in the young dancer a preference for classical music, but not without an appreciation of good jazz.
By the time the stint with the Canadians was over, after two years of the complications of work permits and residency visas, Alexander had an awareness of the practical problems of presenting dance, especially tap in concert form.
By a stroke of good fortune, Alexander received a grant to attend the Portland Tap Festival while worrying, "What next?" Oregon offered classes, workshops, and performances by tap legends. Alexander recalls, "In Oregon, I met some greats of tap dancing--Honi Coles, Steve Condos, LaVaughn Robinson, Dianne "Lady Di" Walker, Brenda Bufalino, and more. Later, some of these artists appeared in my projects, even became personal friends."
ON HIS RETURN TO CHICAGO, HE had a mission that he confided to Kelly Michaels. Michaels, a modern dancer whom Alexander knew from the days in the Puszh dance troupe, agreed. Together they came up with a project that would involve both educational and performing activities. The Chicago Human Rhythm Project was born.
The brave but small beginning consisted of two days of workshops in Evanston's Giordano Dance Center and one performance in a 350-seat auditorium at Northwestern University. Some 200 people attended the program, which illustrated various human rhythms in addition to tap. Among the performers were the Trinity Irish Dancers, the African American Najwa Dance Corps, and Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater. With little business experience, the pioneer founders depended on volunteers for the needed help.
