Photo Matthew Murphy
It’s going to be a full week for tap in Paris. Paris tap jam is having its second session on Tuesday 13th September and on Wednesday 14th, Harlem trained, Barcelona based French tap dance diva Roxane Butterfly will begin teaching (impro and technique) and guesting nightly at a concert in the 20th. The weekend will be filled with masterclasses and more shows. Roxane talks to Ruby TV a few days before winging back to the City of Light.
How do you feel about coming back to Paris?
It´s always nice to know you are going to bump into old friends and see family…
What style of tap will you be teaching?
There will be two angles to my work: improvisation and choreography.
Even though they seem opposite, they do complement each other. Because I am interested in venturing beyond the classical format of tap. Tap is generally perceived as an exclusive member of the jazz-family. I have been trying to cross-over different musical realms for a while: flamenco, African, Indian traditional and contemporary music, as well as experimental…
I noticed that I tend to choreograph when I am not sure that I understand a rhythm i.e. one that is new to my vocabulary (conditioned by the jazz-tap logic of phrasing in a three-and-a-break 8/4 swing feel). I create repetitive dance patterns to hang onto until I find the flow and improvise, ‘making sense’ in both my cultural context, and the context of the form I visit. Then I alternate the free-form sequences with the patterns, which I break into various formats and stage differently, according to the numbers and abilities of the students. In such teaching, I attempt to balance the transmission of historical references (like in my class on Jimmy Slyde stylistics), and suggestions on how to use the tradition (technically and conceptually) to create something new and original within an historical continuity, like in my “crossing-over workshops”. Living in the 21st century is quite a stunning experience. Being in direct contact with so much information and having amazing means of communication through technology affects all I convey as an artist and a teacher.
What for you makes a good tap dancer?
A question I asked my mentor Buster Brown, to which he replied: “If a dancer makes me feel he/she is dancing with me”…
Tell me a bit about the show you’ll be performing in Paris.
I’ll know more when I meet the band. It’s their music and I will be hopping on to ‘illustrate’, so it’s all about the encounter. It is basically the vocalist’s show and I am a guest. I do not know the musicians yet. I am basically showing up to help tap be present at this regular event that my student and friend Hélène (Maisonniaux) is faithfully putting together at the Proscenium Theater. The singer, MV, is a composer moving within the latin-jazz spheres. I have often had to work with musicians who did not have any interest for tap and were fairly ignorant that jazz came out of tap. So when you find a pocket of young people with the desire to “share” their sound with some of us tappers, and are curious about the art, then I am there to give a hand, or should I say “foot”!
How does this show fit into or differ to your other work?
First of all there are many aspects to my work. I am rooted in be bop and lived the Harlem Jazz culture for 20 years. But I am also European with different aesthetics and needs to further explore. So you can find me gigging one day with a big band in New York and the next day in Italy with someone like Xumo Nunjo performing tap barefoot to contemporary African music over a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca…
When I rehearse with my musicians, the first thing I say is “and please do not repeat on stage anything we will be doing in rehearsals”. Rehearsing is a means to learn how to understand and anticipate each other, spontaneously. The point is not to REproduce, nor archive, nor memorise. We share a concept, we define approximate length, texture, emotional intention, speed, but never WRITE music. I always remember a phrase by the great experimental bassist Barre Phillips who once said to a student “You are reading! Ah! But you will loose your soul!”…. Of course out of context it sounds extreme, but this makes much sense to me. The best way to MEET in the sound is by LISTENING and then DANCING. Musicians must know how to dance to be efficiently playing for dancers. But in the occidental world, musicians and dancers live in separate realities. Which is sad.
So I am entering a fairly ‘written’ environment here with the way Hélène’s show is set up, which is another kind of challenge. Because it is simply about entering someone else’s vision. Simply ‘showing up’ to the party and adding a bit of my flavour to a reality already written. MV seems to be a very tasty artist and I am looking forward to sharing some of my colors as she paints.
What are you hoping the audience to take away from the performance?
In the case of this show, which has no more pretention beyond being a gathering of cool people willing to make room for tap in Paris, in whichever format, I just hope they get the spirit of sharing, enjoying oneself and each other through the dance. And have fun.
Briefly, what else is going on for Ms Butterfly over the next months?
Fall will be busy. I am doing a catwalk for Lycra in Barcelona at the end of the month, then off to Finland and Sweden briefly, then will be at Guillem Alonso’s school in Barcelona to help launch the new and exciting tap program there, after which, I’ll be taking off to the East Coast with the US premiere of TAP EXPERIENCE (a show I created with Xumo Nunjo in Barcelona last February) and more presentations of my Jimmy Slyde Institute on tour including at the Frank Sinatra High School For the Performing Arts in NY.
Check details of the classes here and the concerts here.
