On a hot day in early May a group of Columbia College art students are hanging out in front of the school to catch some rays as the sun beats down, warming the sidewalks and parking lots of South Wabash. In the college’s dim cafeteria, less than a hundred yards away, Sarah Petronio is tap-dancing. When she dances, Petronio is sublimely cool–cool enough to pull people out of the spring sunshine into the packed cafeteria.
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Pianist John Young would play a note here and there to color her rhythm, or he would just stare at her feet with a silly smile on his face, just digging the music they made.
Petronio had been tap-dancing for a number of years before she discovered rhythm tap. Although she studied and taught tap for a number of years in New York and Paris, her love was bebop. “Tap wasn’t really important to me,” she says. “I wasn’t into Broadway flash and ding-a-ding-a-ding, which is all they were teaching at that time.”
There were a lot of conflicts, not only because she was a woman, but also because tap had a shabby reputation. “Tap was on the bottom rung of the ladder in dance,” she says. “[People’s attitudes] were like, ‘Oh, Lord! Schlock!’ Until you put on your shoes, get up there and say, ‘Now listen. Listen–I didn’t say watch.’”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Marc PoKempner.
