JAYE ALLISON was in the second grade when she went to a dance recital at the Academy of Music and watched in awe as performers with top hats and canes tapped out a perfect rhythm across the stage.
"It was gorgeous - I'd never seen anything else like it," Allison recalled. "It was like hearing a call to my life."
Allison - who would go on to become a tap evangelist and professional dancer - organized this weekend's Philly Tap Challenge to energize the tap community, showcase its stars and celebrate Philly's storied tap history. The festival, presented by Allison's New LEJA Dances and the Philadelphia Civic Ballet Company, will include workshops and performances by tap luminaries like Jason Samuels Smith, Dianne Walker, Chloe Arnold and Robert Burden.
"Philly is so important when it comes to tap," said Burden, co-founder of Tap Team Two & Company and, along with Allison, a former student of LaVaughn Robinson, who died last year.
In the 1930s, South Street was famous for its "hoofers": street performers whose fast, close-to-the-ground footwork made Philadelphia a tap dancing mecca. Dancers like the Condos Brothers and the Nicholas Brothers, who would go on to star in Hollywood films, first perfected their craft on the stages and sidewalks of South Philadelphia.
"If people wanted to create a name for themselves, they had to come through Philly," Burden explained. "If the street dancers didn't think you were good enough, you weren't."
Several decades later, Philadelphia began commemorating May 25 as National Tap Day - it became an official U.S. holiday in 1989 - by hosting a full day of performances and jams that brought the community together.
When Allison was a student just learning to tap, she looked forward to these annual celebrations all year long. Allison remembered that she and her classmates from the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts would slyly edge their way into the middle of all the action.
"We would just act like we were supposed to be there," Allison said. "Like: yeah, what? I'm a tapper!"
But Burden's Tap Team Two, which had organized Philly's National Tap Day for years, hit the road to go on tour, and - at first - no one stepped up to fill their shoes.
"There was no place to go clickity-clack," said Allison. "I wanted there to be a home for tap dance again."
Allison wasn't just worried about herself and the city's other established dancers. "I had no outlet for my kids who really like to perform their tap dancing," she said, referring to her many students. "We need to make tap dance an exciting and firsthand experience."
Six years ago, Allison responded to that need and created the Philly Tap Challenge - which began as a small-scale, half-day affair.
After some time on the road, Burden realized that he too felt an obligation to take all he had learned and pass it down to the next generation. "When I left, I just left," Burden said. "I didn't mentor enough people."
Every time Burden performed in Philly, he was reminded of the hole he'd left behind. "Whenever we got off the stage, there were a lot of kids who wanted to learn," said Burden, who now has students practicing the shim-sham in the hallways of the charter school where he teaches. "But we didn't know where to tell them to go."
This weekend, anyone who is curious about tap will have a chance to try it out. "My thing is to keep showing it," said Burden. "This is a part of our heritage; this is a part of our history."
The 23 different workshops offered throughout the day today and tomorrow cover topics like tap choreography, the Philly "Paddle 'n' Roll" and how to face off in a tap challenge.
The festival's centerpiece event, The Virtual Quilt, is a piece choreographed by Allison to commemorate and celebrate the history of women in tap. The performance, which will include a live band and a multimedia presentation, will premiere at tonight's amateur recital and then reprise tomorrow as part of the star-studded professional showcase.
The roster of performers assembled for tomorrow's show reads like a who's who in tap dancing. "You will never again have the opportunity to see these people for $10," said Allison. "If people don't come, they are going to miss the best treat of their life." *
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