Season 2, Episode 1:  “I Found Refuge in Tap Dancing” ft Gerson Lanza

NARRATION: I have an obsession that I want to confess to you. I am deeply, strangely fascinated with the ways that people communicate without language. I know it’s kind of funny for someone who likes to write, but spot on for a musician! Throughout my life, some of my most profound relationships have not included even conversation. 

One example of this, of a soul connection without words, has to be my grandfather. Me and my grandfather used to spend hours laughing together. All he had to do was give me one look, and I’d crack up. It would start with a chuckle, and then escalate to a full on roar, and sometimes we’d get to that can’t breath, milk in your nose full on cackle.

 Whether we were at my aunt's house in Seattle, or back in his Addis Ababa living room, this was our MO. See we didn’t speak the same language because in my childhood, my family moved to the States from Ethiopia, and after I entered the American school system, I never regained the Amharic fluency I once had. 

And my grandfather never learned English. He didn’t need to, he was an elder by the time he got to the US. And that made the laughter extra precious. All I had to do was glance over his way, and he’d smile at me, and we were somehow of one mind, even though there were so few words between us. Laughing together was how we say I see you and I love you. 

Today’s show is about just that. I am talking with tap dancer Gerson Lanza, a man who, without saying a word, can tell whole histories with his feet. 

My name is Meklit and this is Movement: music and migration, remixed. 

And in case it wasn’t clear this is the start of a brand new season y’all.

This season, I’m going to help you discover music that doesn’t shy away from the large scale forces at work in all of our lives, and in the music we are surrounded by every single day. We want to make you hear the world just a little bit differently. Your head, your heart and your hips, will thank you. 

Gerson Lanza: ​So, when I first got here in 2001, I didn't speak nothing, not a, nothing.

NARRATION: Gerson Lanza moved from Honduras to the Bronx when he was 11 years old. He and his two brothers shared a single bright orange suitcase, filled with only summer clothes. That was it.

Gerson Lanza: I'm culture shock. I don't know where I'm at. I don't know why the cat sleeping on the bread in a deli? I don't know nothing.

NARRATION: Today, Gerson is an acclaimed Afro-Latino tap dancer who has performed everywhere from the Cotton Club in Harlem to the Kennedy Center in DC. He’s also a scholar, someone trying to change the way people think about tap dancing. Refocus us on how it too began from an experience of migration. A forced migration of people who made culture, despite a centuries long brutal attempt to take everything away. 

But when he moved to New York, Gerson didn’t know any of that. He was just an 11 year old kid, trying to find his way in a new place. And his mom was worried about him. 

Gerson Lanza: My mom noticed that I wasn't learning English fast enough for her liking because I was, I was with, my Puerto Rican friends, Dominican friends, Guatemalan, Honduran friends. Like talking Spanish all the time. The only time we really were talking English was in class, and even then, all our teachers were bilingual. In CS211 near East Tremont in the Bronx

Meklit Hadero: Right.

Gerson Lanza: And so my mother was like, you know what? We're going to move to Harlem. Which is obviously a very predominantly black, neighborhood. It's a very Latino thing to do. It's just like we're gonna throw you in the middle of the ocean and you're gonna have to swim. That's how I got into Performing Arts High School. 

Meklit Hadero: Can you describe what it was like, like what was it like to walk into your performing arts school before you spoke English. Like what were the first moments? 

Gerson Lanza: Oh man. 

Meklit Hadero: Like.

Gerson Lanza: I walked into Miss Evelyn class, social studies.

Meklit Hadero: Hey!

Gerson Lanza: And she asked me, what's your name? And my response was like, my name is Gerson. But now with this confidence of now, it was very much like a shy, hi, my name is Gerson. 

She just said, go sit down over there, which was in the back of the classroom, and I didn't speak for like an entire week because I felt so small. Mind you, this is my first time that I'm in a full English speaking middle school where I don't know nobody in Harlem and my welcoming was, go sit down in the back. And that was it. 

Meklit Hadero: So what were your survival tactics? Like, what did you do to survive?

Gerson Lanza: Believe it or not, when they do the end of the year show? The tap dance group was always last. And nobody would leave, no matter how terrible the other numbers were. Nobody would leave until they see the tap dance group. So then I saw that and I was like, yeah, I wanna be part of this thing.

Meklit Hadero: Yes.

NARRATION: And there’s a reason Gerson wanted to be part of tap dancing. It had actually been part of Gerson’s world for years, before he came to Harlem, and before he even came to the US. Almost from the time he was born. Almost. 

Meklit Hadero: When you were a kid growing up in Honduras, what did you know about tap dancing?

Gerson Lanza: Absolutely nothing.

Meklit Hadero: Really?

Gerson Lanza: Tap dance was never in the picture. 

NARRATION: Gerson’s tap dance journey really begins in Honduras, watching TV.

Gerson Lanza: I used to go to kindergarten and would come back home and we would sit down in the couch before doing my homework and we'd turn on the TV. It was a ritual that my dad and I always did. 

Gerson Lanza: At the time it was one of those big monster TVs that looked like furniture.

Meklit Hadero: Yes! I know exactly what you're talking about.

Gerson Lanza: Yeah, and my mom had sent that TV from the US cause she was already living in the United States. Nonetheless, my dad and I sat down in front of that TV and turned on Sesame Street

Meklit Hadero: Mm

Gerson Lanza: And in one of these episodes, I first encounter tap dance through Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines .

ARCHIVAL: Today my brother and I are going to be talking about near and far. 

Gerson Lanza: And I saw their feet move so fast and I'm like, how can they make all of this sounds and their body don't, is not moving as fast as this sounds are hitting my ear. What’s happening? 

Meklit Hadero: Like a superpower. 

Gerson Lanza: Yeah, it's exactly what it was. It was a superpower. And so I was like, wow, they making music with their bodies, with their feet. 

NARRATION: Listening to Gerson,  I started thinking about the first times I saw hip-hop on the streets of Brooklyn and that was also like a superpower. A group of people in a circle would beatbox and the mouth, and lips, and tongue would become a drum. Even though hip hop was barely allowed on mainstream radio at the time, it was bursting from the seams of culture, bringing people together, proliferating, and refusing to be silenced. 

I couldn’t help but make the connection that day in front of the TV, Gerson was connecting with an artform that would ultimately allow him to express himself. Be himself, claim space for himself. And the roots of the art form, like hip hop, felt like they were made for someone just like him. 

Meklit Hadero: Can you talk a little bit about the history of tap, and specifically its history as a Black art form?

Gerson Lanza: Sure, and I think you hit it on the nail right away by saying that tap dance is an African American art form. Some folks do not know that. And it's really important to put that up front.Tap dancing, it started from way back when enslaved Africans came into the United States. There is laws that were put into place, that removed the use of drums. We think about the Stono Rebellion or Stono Revolution that happened in South Carolina, where these drums were taken away because drums were, and trumpets were viewed as a form to ignite revolutions.

Meklit Hadero: they understood the power.

Gerson Lanza: They understood the power exactly. And because they understood the power and they thought that this was the way to eradicate such power, they decided to create rules to remove the use of this instrument. So what happens when you take away the instruments, you only have, but your bare self, your body to be able to emulates the sounds of the instruments you play. So then the body becomes that form of expression. 

Meklit Hadero: Yes. Like it, to me, it makes me think of way that like, take away the drum. But the knowledge, the traditions, they don't go. Exactly! They remain. You can try to erase, but the traditions live in people. They live in people in such a way that it is impossible. It is impossible to erase. It reminds me of that sentence, like they tried to bury us but they didn’t know we were seeds. 

Gerson Lanza: Never heard of it, but I love it!

[music and tap dancing]

NARRATION: Gerson didn’t know it at the time, but from his living room in Honduras he was receiving the fruit of that long ago seed. A seed that flowered in the Harlem Renaissance, and has grown there ever since. 

Gerson Lanza: The second encounter with tap dance was, are you familiar with the Apollo theater in Harlem?

Meklit Hadero: I'm familiar with it. Actually, I've 

Gerson Lanza: I figured, 

Meklit Hadero: I've played there, but only the little stage. Only the little one.

Gerson Lanza: I'm, nah, nah. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. Well, then you are also familiar with Amateur Night at the Apollo, which happens every Wednesday. And they've been doing this for decades and decades. Well, again, reruns in Honduras.

ARCHIVAL: It is time for Amateur Night with Mark Curry. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Apollo Amateur Night. I'm your host, Mark Curry, and we're gonna kick in the rules. If we like the act you can. It’s up to you if you don’t like ‘em, you can: boo!

Gerson Lanza: I was, I was again in my living room with my dad. And, Amateur Night at the Apollo is famous for booing people off stage.

Meklit Hadero: Yes, it is. It's high pressure.

Gerson Lanza: It's high pressure. You either bring it correct, or you're gonna get booed off stage very, very quickly. Well, what happens when you get booed off stage? The Sandman comes out. 

Gerson Lanza: And the Sandman has always been a tap dancer.

Meklit Hadero: Oh yes!

Gerson Lanza: And I remember he jumped off the balcony onto the stage and started doing these amazing rhythms as he's like moving the unwanted talent from stage. And the crowd goes crazy while he's on stage doing his thing, right?

That was the second time I encountered tap dancing. And again, it was like this glorious moment. Of course, not for the performer on stage, but for me watching from the distance from Honduras, to be exact. This was the one of the most entertaining things that I've ever seen.

Meklit Hadero: How old are you in this moment?

Gerson Lanza: At this time, I was probably nine years old. Nine or eight. Now, I got to tell you about the third time I actually saw tap dancing

Meklit Hadero: In person.

Gerson Lanza: In person. I'm now 11 and I'm in the United States and I'm going to Watley Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts in New York City.

NARRATION: Again, he sees the tap dancers perform. It's glorious; it's the highlight of the show. For a new kid in school with no friends and barely any English, it is the thing to do, and Gerson wants in. But then there is a little coincidence that absolutely seals the deal. 

Gerson Lanza: Well, it happens that when I walked into the dance class, the person that walks in to teach that class is the very same Sandman from the Apollo that I watched from my living room in Honduras. It brought a sense of calmness because I was familiar with the Sandman. I was familiar with the environment that he was in.

Meklit Hadero: And it was a thread it was like a thread of continuity that you could hold.

Gerson Lanza: Exactly.

Meklit Hadero: And I'm also thinking of the way that when you have a migration experience and you don't know the language, suddenly you're also given and you yourself are putting energy into cultivating a skill where you can communicate your very essence and being even without words. 

Gerson Lanza: Totally. I really found refuge in tap dancing, like literally. Like, you know how often people say, yo, you know, yeah, art is a form of self communication. For to me, that was the, that was it. I couldn't speak English, right? Like I, there was no preparation for my coming to the United States. Not for me or my brothers. 

And so for me, truly tap dancing was the form. Cause you can communicate so much through dancing. You know, you can hit hard, you can hit soft. You can find different tonalities in your tap shoes. There's a lot can be said with tap dancing.

Meklit Hadero: Yes.

Gerson Lanza: And for me, it was truly that.

NARRATION: When Gerson was a kid, and he put on his tap shoes, he was trying to fit in, be one of the cool kids, but also answer a call to dance that had hooked him way back in Honduras on that television screen. Now, he's been tap dancing for over  two decades and what he wants to communicate has changed. Now when he travels from place to place, he leads people to reject the whitewashing of tap, and to understand that its roots are intricately entwined, inseparable, in fact, from the history of Black people in America. 

Meklit Hadero: You've said before that like a lot of people today don't know the history of tap dancing or they're just associating it with like Gene Kelly and Singing in the Rain. You know, what do you want people to think about when they hear the words tap dance?

Gerson Lanza: When that word comes to the ears, I also want them to associate that word with Black Excellence, an American art form, born out of enslaved Africans. I want them to think about that it's not just the dance, but it's also music. I want them to think that All of those things.

NARRATION: You can catch Gerson on stage this year with the tap company Music from the Sole, which was listed by the New York Times as one of the best dance performances of 2022. Gerson is also wrapping up his MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland and recently defended his thesis. Not bad for a kid who walked into school barely confident enough to speak his name.

My grandfather is an ancestor now. I keep a photo of him on my bookshelf, and I still look at it most days. In the picture, he’s at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, just outside Seattle. He’s wearing a suit, a white button down shirt with brown and tan stripes, and leather dress shoes. Behind him is a field of pink tulips as far as the eye can see, and a little patch of rare blue sky with passing clouds. He’s got this smile on his face, and when I close my eyes, I still think of him as just about to laugh. Our own little language, bursting from the photo.  

I try to listen to that photo, in the same way that I listen to Gerson dance. Gerson’s feet, they speak to me. Gerson taught me that you don’t just watch dance, you can hear it. Dancers are percussionists. Dancers are musicians. Think about the flamenco dancer, whose feet are as rapid fire as a soloing drum kit. Or the zapateado of Son Jarocho channeling Afro Mexico via high heels on wooden boxes. Or the Bharatanatyam from India, where bangles on ankles stack complex rhythms with each footfall. 

Each sound speaking more than words, each sound part of the dance. One inseparable whole. 

This season you will find new sounds to fall in love with, from artists whose life stories and songs bloom from migration. 

You’ll hear from Dayme Arocena, one of my all time favorite vocalists, about an unexpected move that transformed her sound.. 

Sid Sriram about his winding journey from the Indian film industry to a stage at Coachella. 

And you’ll hear from the Puerto Rican pop duo Buscabulla, who tell me what it’s like for independent artists on the island in the wake of Bad Bunny’s massive, massive success.

And so much more.

Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our editor is Megan Tan. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by the Mellon Foundation and distributed by PRX.

If you enjoyed this story, consider sending it to a friend, or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Believe me, this stuff really does help people find the show. If you happen to be curious about my albums, or performances, you can learn more at meklitmusic.com. Movement will be back with new episodes every Tuesday through the summer and fall.