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Transcription: [00:36:08]
{SPEAKER name="Robinson"}
Well, they wasn't just Black dancers now, you had a lot of white master tap dancers in Philadelphia that were challenged would come down to the back bay area of Philadelphia and challenge the black dancers and we would go down to the white area and challenge the white dancers,
[00:36:22]
and we would all meet at Broad and South outside of Pepsi Bar, back in the little street behind the Lincoln Theatre or either Kater Street.
[00:36:33]
Now that they remolded the street and everything they don't call it Kater Street no more, it's "Ka-teer Street"? Spelled the same but pronunciation has changed. You know they put a little pizzazz in it and you know call it "Ka-teer" Street now, you know.
[00:36:50]
Yeah right, you remember them days, you was out there tap dancing at that time ya know. Yep, when they had the dance teams they must have had 1000 dance teams at Philadelphia at that time.
[00:37:01]
They had teams like Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper. They had teams like Pot, Pan, and Skillet. I mean these were really tap dance teams.
[00:37:12]
They had teams like, you know these, the Clock Brothers, right? The Nicolas Brothers, right? And all these teams were pretty good tap dancers.

[00:37:23]
{SPEAKER name="Interviewer"}
Well, I wonder if--two lovely ladies chiming in at a time--but we know this to say with break dancing, you have certain obligatory moves: the moonwalk, the helicopter.
[00:37:38]
Are there any particular steps that you study with a master dancer or something like that, but tapping steps that are sort of your, the foundation upon which the art form is built?

[00:37:53]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
Um, yeah there are certain steps. Well, for one thing every tap dancer has his or her favorite time steps and time steps are just what they sound like. They are steps that are made to set the time, so that the other dancers or accompaniment knows what the tempo is and knows what the meter is.
[00:38:18]
And there are basic steps. It's funny, when I started dancing with LaVaughn, he didn't know these.
[00:38:27]
I start talking about the nomenclature, and he says what's that, and I say well a ball change. And he says, "A ball and chain?"
[00:38:36]
So the nomenclature didn't make any difference. I guess the nomenclature came along when tap dance began being taught in organized schools.
[00:38:46]
But the people on the street didn't necessarily rely on the nomenclature. You had to pick it up by seeing it, you picked it up by seeing it and by the sound. I guess mostly by the sound because there's a lot in tap dance that you can't see.
[00:39:01]
And you have to know the sound. You have to internalize the sound in order to learn it. But there are shuffles, there are wings, umm, wha-

[00:39:14]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 3"}
There are riffs.

[00:39:16]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
Riffs, skilly bops, yea that's some of the vocabulary of the dance.
[00:39:22]
What's distinctive I think about the way that LaVaughn dances and the way that we've begun to learn is the paddle.
[00:39:32]
If you see other tap dancers around the country, you very rarely see them dance with the close paddle that LaVaughn dances, that's the fast paddle back that goes from heel to toe back and forth, single paddles, double paddles, triple paddles that you see LaVaughn execute so marvelously on-on the stage, that you've seen in the past couple of days.
[00:39:57]
And that's really distinctive, in LaVaughn's style of dancing. I was in New York a couple of years ago at a tap dance seminar and uh, um, wha-what's Cook's. Charlie Cook who dances with an old team called Cook and Brown,
[00:40:18]
and knew I was in Philadelphia and I put on my shoes and started dancing, and he said, "Oh yeah, you like them paddles don't you, you must know LaVaughn Robinson."
[00:40:27]
So that was an indication to me that how distinctive paddling is, and how much LaVaughn is associated with that style.

[00:40:37]
{SPEAKER name="Robinson"}
Thank you very much.

[00:40:40]
{SPEAKER name="Interviewer"}
This lady has something here.

[00:40:44]
{SPEAKER name="Unknown"}
One of my favorite stories is LaVaughn's learning the paddle for the first time. I don't even know if I can tell as well-