Tapping the Margins will culminate in a scholarly book about women in jazz-tap dancing based on research in the Ernie Smith Jazz Dance film collection in the archives of the National Museum of American History. The book’s analysis considers constructions of gender, race, class, and sexuality in historical performances of jazz-tap dancing.
Kilkelly is working with Mary Neth at the University of Missouri, and the NEH grant will allow them to continue their research collaboration and writing of the book. Kilkelly and Neth have given scholarly presentations on women and jazz-tap since 1992 at universities and dance studios and in national festivals. Kilkelly also does master classes, workshops, and performances in the historical forms of tap and vernacular jazz dance. In part, she takes the research for the book into her performances.
"I think it’s important to learn and perform the dances and music as a part of the research," Killkelly said, "so I give classes and conduct master workshops that incorporate the film material that the book is based on. The research also forms the basis for the material I perform on stage."
The researchers also have each received Smithsonian Senior Fellowships twice to pursue this work in residencies at the museum. Kilkelly and Neth’s research also involved listening to oral histories of jazz performers in Smithsonian’s collection. They also looked at the Shiffman collection, which contains the business records of Frank Shiffman, the business manager of the Apollo Theater from the 30s through the early 60s. The Apollo is the major performance venue in Harlem where top Black acts such as Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday played and many great tap dancers performed. Kilkelly and Neth’s studies included researching the 4 x 6 business cards on which Shiffman had made "absolutely brutal" notes about the "sell" value of the performers, the money paid out and taken in by the club, and comments on appearance and behavior, Kilkelly said. They also looked at programs, show bills, films from the Library of Congress, and other historical materials.
At the same time, Kilkelly invited dancers into the archives to view some of the materials. She read Billy Strayhorn’s scores for the Copacetics, a group of tap masters formed to remember Bill Bo Jangles Robinson, with renowned dancer Brenda Bufalino. She brought D.C. dancers and teachers into the Smithsonian archives to look at films. "It’s important to me that this research serves the field, the dancers, the art of tap dancing," Kilkelly said, "because the art form is not sufficiently credited or appreciated. The historical and ongoing presence of race, class, and gender distinctions has kept tap a second-class art form. It’s important to me that I write a scholarly book that helps people see and value the dance. I’m an activist scholar. I want people to see and love tap dancing because it’s important and reveals our culture so clearly. That’s why I dance, too."
Kilkelly’s mentors in the tap world were some of the old tap master such Honi Coles and Brenda Bufalino, and she also has studied with Motown choreographers Cholly Atkins, tappers Buster Brown and Cookie Cook, and many others. "I studied with anybody I could find for about 30 years, going where they were, so that I am a pretty good tap dancer," Kilkelly said. "My style is technical and improvisational, like jazz music."
Kilkelly is, in fact, a master teacher of jazz-tap dance. Besides teaching courses in women’s studies and theater arts at Virginia Tech, she has presented workshops throughout the United States and in Italy. She also serves as a faculty member of The Center of Dance in Blacksburg and master teacher for Dance Week at The Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C. She has a dance company called Foot Notes that performs locally.
Kilkelly has had a varied career. She served as director of the Women’s Studies program at Virginia Tech from 1991 until 1997, earning the Virginia Tech Exemplary Program Award for creative and innovative use of faculty resources. Before that, she was director of the English Program at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. She has served as an instructor for the College Prison Program at the University of Utah, Provo, was a company agent for Dansk Design in Wiesbaden, Germany, and was an instructor for Mainz-Kastel and Lindsay Air Force Bases in Mainz and Wiesbaden, Germany.
Her awards are just as varied. She received the Virginia Tech College of Arts and Sciences Diversity Award, was named Virginia Tech Woman of the Year by the Women’s Center, and earned the Diggs Scholar-Teacher Award for Excellence in Teaching from Virginia Tech, the Brigham Award for Excellence in Teaching from Transylvania University, and several Kentucky Foundation for Women awards, including grants for poetry writing and family history in Ireland.
Kilkelly has written book chapters, articles in professional publications, and was coordinating editor of the Community Arts issue of High Performance: Contemporary Issues in Art, Education, and Culture. She also has published poems and short stories published in literary journals and collections. And she has written three choral compositions with composer Zae Munn. The compositions have been performed all over the country, including premier performances at Harvard by the Wellesley Women’s Chorus, and have won prizes in national competitions.
In addition, Kilkelly has performed in many venues, including La Mama Theatre in New York (which earned her a rave review from Hennifer Dunning of the New York Times) and an Emory University concert series in Atlanta. She has written scripts for television productions, including The Spirit of Christmas aired by the CBS affiliate in Lexington, Ky., and given interviews on feminism in the United States for England’s Channel 4.
The high point of Kilkelly’s summer this year was a performance at the New York City Tap Festival, when she was on the program with Gregory Hines, Savion Glover, Van Porter, Brenda Bufalino, Jimmy Slyde, Sara Petronio, Tony Waag, and many others. "It was a moment of moments," Kilkelly said, "dancing there, in the same space with my most cherished teachers and inspirers, in New York, in a theater on 42nd Street. The best thing was that the tap community was alive and kicking."
PR CONTACT: Sally Harris (540) 231-6759 slharris@vt.edu