Thursday, May 7, 2015

Get Ready for National Tap Dance Day!

In NYC May 25th Pier 45 of the Hudson River Park noon hundreds of tapper

Ahh Memorial Day Weekend is just three weeks away. We can almost smell the budding flowers, the fresh-cut grass, the charcoal grill…It’s the first real taste of summer freedom.

But what could make this three-day weekend even better? Um, National Tap Dance Day, of course!

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson teaches Shirley Temple the stair dance in The Little Colonel (1935)

The holiday falls on May 25 each year, in honor of tap legend Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s birthday. President George H.W. Bush signed NTDD into law back in 1989, making this year its 25th anniversary…so naturally, it has to be extra special.

While there will be celebrations throughout the US, the American Tap Dance Foundation (ATDF) is setting up shop in NYC with Tap Attack, an outdoor event (free to the public) featuring tap students from ages 5 to 75. Things to look forward to: free lessons in how to do the Shim Sham, appearances by big-time names in the tap world (Chloé Arnold and Jason Samuels Smith, to name a couple), and performances by the talented young hoofers of ATDF’s own Tap City Youth Ensemble. (Click here for more info on all the tap-tastic events scheduled.)

So if you’re in or around NYC, mark your calendars for this Memorial Day Weekend, and be sure to make your way over to Pier 45 of the Hudson River Park on Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, here’s a video of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson hoofin’ it up with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel:

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Praxis, my dear, is the only real way to succeed in the culture war.

Praxis, my dear, is the only real way to succeed in the culture war.
Yes indeed there is a culture war going .. but you know that if you have arrived here. We suggest that you put theory into practice by taking virtual you and virtual ideas into the reality of real live physical and cognitive action.

MEANING: get up and out of your chair and do something physical in real time. OCCUPY YOUR BODY. Be physical.

The fuel is love, compassion and curiosity. Anger is a result of the repression of fear and distances one from compassionate change ... do the Che Che cha cha cha .. or if you prefer the Stiegler tango! or the Shulamith Firestone death metal raga!

PRAXIS is the action of putting into practice the thoughts, theories and desires running through your bio-magnetic, nerve sensitive self. Reality propelled by the friction of input/output.

Damn it, it should be fun !

I will share with you my interaction in the real world and the theoretical world and invite you to do the same.

Politics is an everyday affair. Politics is how we live our lives Every action or non-action we do is a political act. Culture is the expression of desire in public interactive way.

So jump in please.

Join me in participating in life. Making change starts with self and ripples out. Pop culture is where I live ..not in some isolated, white tower, postmodern, distancing intellectual thought or theory. Theory in practice is praxis . It used to be called dialectics .. still a good word even if dressed up in new theory drag.

Serious fun has it consequences including changing the status quo.

We are all at the same life party. Find the door you can come through to make PRAXIS a full time act of creativity .

jim fouratt