by Sarah Thomas

Michela Marino Lerman is a tap dance artist, educator, and choreographer based in NYC. This week at The Jazz Gallery, Michela presents originals and favorite tunes alongside her working quartet. We caught up with Michela to talk about the rich history of tap dance, putting together musical programs, and the relationship between music and movement.

The Jazz Gallery: What will you be performing at The Jazz Gallery next week?

Michela Marino Lerman: This show is with my quartet, which is Miki Yamanaka on piano, Russell Hall on bass, Timothy Angulo on drums, and myself. We're going to be playing a mix up of originals and favorite tunes throughout our sets. We’ll have music from Jason Moran, John Coltrane, Monk—you name it, anybody and everybody.

TJG: How did your quartet come together?

MML: This particular band has only come together in the past few months. But Russell and I have been working together for many years, and our collaborations range from our artistic projects to being engaged. We are life collaborators. We've had many different projects throughout the years together, different bands and configurations.

This quartet kind of came together by accident. The people I normally play with were unavailable, so I asked some other friends to play. I love Miki’s and Tim's playing so much. Tim's playing is like water. So I really jumped at the opportunity to be able to work with them. 

It just so happened that the way the dice have fallen, they've been the ones available lately. It's just worked out this way, and I'm having so much fun with them. I'm finding so much freedom with them that I have not felt in a very long time. So I'm extremely grateful for that feeling.

TJG: It’s cool to hear about a band coming together in such an organic way and that you’re finding something really special there.

MML: Yeah, and it's particularly unique to find a drummer that really supports tap dancing so well. We actually haven't rehearsed with this exact band. It's been different—one time with Miki and some other folks, one time with Tim and some other folks. So we’ve never really rehearsed. 

Tim just gets it immediately, and that's a very special freedom that I don't often get to feel as a tap dancer. Tim is someone that really listens, supports, leaves space. He plays with the timbre and the tone so the taps and the drums don’t clash, but they really support each other. Tim just does all of that organically and magically. So I am really enjoying the experience of playing with him. 

Then there’s Miki, who is such a force. She brings such a power and magic to the music. I love her creativity and the way she listens and supports me as a dancer as well. 

And then, of course, Russell is amazing and has always been such a support in that journey of being a tap dance artist and instrumentalist—an additional percussion player or soloist on the bandstand. So he's really helped me throughout the years developing ideas and songs, and developing new ways to incorporate tap dancing organically—in a way that feels natural and cohesive with everything that's going on and doesn't stand out in any kind of way.

TJG: You talk about the idea of “the unification of music and movement.” What does that unification mean to you as you work with the band?

MML: This is going to be a long answer. 

From their inception, from their root, tap and jazz music really historically sprouted out of the same seed. They’ve gone their respective directions, one as movement-based sound and one as instrumental sound. But you really can trace back both art forms to an event that happened at the formation of the complex history of this country, with the outlawing of the drums from enslaved African peoples as the result of a rebellion organized through drum communication from plantation to plantation.

When those drums got outlawed, it was deemed “safe”—to the plantation owners, mind you—it was “safe” to have one person playing one stringed instrument and singing, and to have one person dancing. That was “safe” and could not cause any more rebellions or revolts. 

Those two instances really led to the creation of the blues, which obviously led to jazz, because you have the stringed guitar, singing, and kind of chanting, almost. Then you have all the drum rhythms going into the body and creating new types of percussion, and that eventually became tap dancing. So that’s both art forms really sprouting from this same seed. 

That's the foundation of their connection. Then they swirl and orbit each other throughout time. All the speakeasies, saloons, and juke joints would have musicians and dancers performing together. There's a tradition of pianists and tap dancers working together, as well. 

Then, of course, there's the whole relationship between tap dance and the big band and swing era. Every big orchestra—Chick Webb, Duke Ellington, Count Basie—they all had featured tap dance acts. They had soloists, they had chorus girls, they had flash acts. So there's a tremendous amount of tap dancing happening with the music all throughout history. 

Then, when the music changed to bebop, there's a real relationship there as well. The story goes, as I know it, that as the music was evolving, all those juicy breaks in swing music arrangements would get filled up by tap dancers. The musicians were really relegated to what was happening orchestrally on their charts, and the tap dancers were filling in these improvised 2-bar or 4-bar breaks. 

And the drummers were really getting into it. They really wanted to branch out and do some of those rhythms that they were hearing from the tap dancers, and this exchange was going on back and forth. This real interaction between tap dancers and swing and big band drummers perpetuated the creation of bebop. Many of the drummers also tap danced, so there was this really organic connection. 

It's ironic, because once the music transferred to bebop throughout time, it kind of pushed the tap dance acts out. It became very difficult to dance to that type of music. It didn't leave all this space for the tap dancers to fill in. But it was directly linked to tap dance rhythms. 

So then up sprouts a new style of bebop and jazz improvisational tap dancing with people like Baby Laurence, Chuck Green, and Jimmy Slyde. All these people became real jazz bebop tap dancers, and it really perpetuated yet another style. 

So it's a really beautiful evolution throughout the years of the relationship between tap dance and jazz. Because all of that interaction happened in a time different than this one, it's been kind of unknown to people who are not specifically looking for that information. So it's not that I'm building a bridge that isn't there, I'm just trying to remind people that the bridge exists. It's here. It's been here, always. I'm trying to highlight the bridge and I'm doing whatever I can to help move it forward. 

One of my mentors was a tap dancer named Gregory Hines. He was very, very integral in modernizing and moving tap dance forward and really getting people to understand this concept of a solo tap dance artist—someone to listen to, that the dance really is music. It's not just a performance or movement-based thing to watch, but tap is really something to listen to and incorporate. 

So I'm just trying to do my part, inspired by my mentor, Gregory, to take those ideas, highlight that bridge, and help bring the art form even further forward into the future and keep it close with the music.

TJG: What are some things that are important to you when thinking about programming and your audience? 

MML: I have this very specific situation being a tap dancer, and that's always the focus. I'm a tap dancer and I'm trying to highlight that bridge between the art forms. I'm trying to get people to understand tap’s relevance in a musical setting. So that's always the mission. 

Then I have to really take into account my audience and where I'm presenting whatever I'm presenting. Who's going to be there? What's the vibe? What's the best way to translate all those focused messages of really rooting myself? I'm a tap dancer, and I'm also a musician. I want people to understand that. I want people to fall in love with tap dancing. So that's always the focus. 

Like I said, I've been able to explore a lot of freedom with this group. A place like The Jazz Gallery is so welcoming to that, as well. I feel like I get to branch out and do music that’s a little more experimental and a little more free with this group. Knowing that I'm going to be at The Jazz Gallery means I know I can lean into that, take some explorations and journeys and risks, and try to push the bar. 

But, for example, a few weeks ago I did a performance for a family festival in Miami. So I had to present a very different show to families and children. I knew I couldn't go that far out with them. But the mission was still the same—to get them to understand the music and the relationship between tap dance and music. 

So that's what really roots me—that mission. Then I go accordingly with where I'm at, who I’m going to be sharing with, and how I can best communicate that mission to my audience so they feel it, and they get it, and they leave with a new concept about tap dance and its relationship to the music.

TJG: Are there any other projects you've got coming up that you want to share with our readers?

MML: I'll be at Harlem Stage coming up in February. They commissioned my larger group, Love Movement, to do a re-imagination of Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s iconic album, We Insist! So we're taking that album and adding some other beautiful music from Abbey to the set to create an evening that's very special. That’s February 24 and 25. 

That's another thing that goes into creating stuff.  For this work at The Jazz Gallery, I'm mainly getting to improvise and really be free. With the Harlem Stage show, I'll be creating choreography around improvisation to give us some structure. 

So that's also a dynamic that I get to play with which, again, is related to the music. You have sets that are more free and people don't have charts and they’re just playing. And then you have very arranged, organized sets of music. So that kind of ebbs and flows the same way as a dancer, where some things are more improvised and some things are more choreographed. So I have to create some choreography for this Harlem Stage show, which is cool. That’s like creating compositions or arrangements. 

The other thing that's exciting about this show is that our person stepping in to represent Abbey Lincoln will be Charenée Wade and our person stepping in to represent Max Roach will be Jeff “Tain” Watts. That is a real gem to be able to play a whole set of music and create something with Tain, as a rhythm king. I'm very excited about that.

Michela Marino Lerman performs at The Jazz Gallery on Thursday, January 26. The group features Michela Marino Lerman on tap dancing, Miki Yamanaka on piano, Russell Hall on bass, and Timothy Angulo on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. ET. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 Livestream (FREE for members). Purchase tickets here.