Research Catalog

Interview with Charles Goddertz

Title: Interview with Charles Goddertz, 2020/ Conducted remotely by Raquel Valiente on August 10, 11 and 13, 2020; Producer: Dance Oral History Project.
Author: Goddertz, Charles
Publication: 2020

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections Dance to submit a request in person.	Moving image	Supervised use	*MGZMT 3-3487	Performing Arts Research Collections Dance

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Additional Authors

Valiente, Raquel

Description

3 streaming video files (approximately 4 hrs., 49 min.) : sound, color. +

Summary

Streaming file 1 (approximately 1 hour and 37 minutes), August 10, 2020. Charles Goddertz speaks with Raquel Valiente about his childhood in Port Arthur, Texas including his first dance classes, with his mother; his teachers Florence Coleman [at the Florence Coleman School of Dance] and Annabelle Taylor; his first trip to New York City when he was about 14; taking tap dance class with Jack Stanly and ballet with Jack Potteiger in New York when he was 15; as a child regularly performing in the children's theater in Port Arthur; Stanly's tap routine Blue skies, including an anecdote about Stanly's reaction when he saw Goddertz dancing the routine in Coleman's studio; his hiatus from dancing beginning when he was about 16; marrying immediately after graduating from high school; his return to dancing after seeing a recital and moving at age 19 to Miami, Florida, to train with Stanly; an anecdote about Potteiger's dismissive comment on his technique; a typical day at the school including his private lessons with Stan Mazin learning tap dance routines; his early difficulties at the school including an anecdote about Stanly's telling him that he should try a different career; renewing his efforts with the result that Stanly kept him on at the school and Potteiger (about a year later) told him he was ready to audition for Ballet Theatre [American Ballet Theatre]; Stanly as a teacher; leaving the School in the fall of 1964 and (after briefly considering a career as a jockey) moving with his wife and young daughter back to Port Arthur; opening a dance school in Port Arthur with his sister, Gloria; auditioning successfully for the Houston Music Theater in Houston (Texas); auditioning successfully for the Dallas Summer Musicals and spending two summers performing in shows there including Sweet Charity, with the original Bob Fosse choreography; performing between summers in Sweet Charity on tour; his move to New York City; his first few weeks in New York including his unsuccessful audition for George M!; performing in a production of West Side story at Playhouse on the Mall in New Jersey; (very briefly) his first Broadway show Georgy; (prior to Georgy) touring for six months with the National Company of Maine, with Elaine Stritch; more on Georgy including Clive Barnes's negative review; his next Broadway musical, an adaptation of Teahouse of the August moon (Lovely ladies, kind gentlemen), in which he was also the dance captain; taking class with Luigi; while on tour taking ballet class and teaching tap dance to cast members; his experience as a dancer and tap dance teacher in a touring production of Seesaw with Tommy Tune; performing in Hello Dolly! with his [second] wife Sachi Shimizu; reminiscences of Pearl Bailey and her brother Bill Bailey including a performance anecdote about Pearl; his general reflections on the harsher aspects of show business.
Streaming file 2 (approximately 1 hour and 36 minutes), August 11, 2020. Charles Goddertz speaks with Raquel Valiente about the routine casting of non-Asians in Asian roles at the time he was in Lovely ladies, kind gentlemen; the casting of his (then) wife, Sachi Shimizu by Baayork Lee as a replacement in the Chicago production of A chorus line; how this eventually led to their separating while he was on tour with Hello Dolly! in a production starring Carol Channing; returning with Hello Dolly! to Broadway for a six-month run during which time he took ballet classes with David Howard; his transition after Hello Dolly! to choreographing, initially for a production of Annie get your gun in Ohio; an anecdote about the Ohio production and Earnie Shavers; his continuing to find work as a choreographer after returning to New York but also enduring frequent periods of unemployment; leaving show business for about two years to work in the handbag business; his personal life at the time he first moved to New York City including his relationship with his (by then former) first wife and children; (briefly) his and his sister's first dance school, in Houston (Texas); his friendship with Janis Joplin, whom he knew from Port Arthur; more on his family including his sisters Gloria and Patty; (briefly) Joyce Trisler and the musical Ambassador, including his reminiscences of Howard Keel; around the time of his transition to choreographing, opening the American Theater Dance School and starting a company, American Theater Dance Company that performed at the 92nd St. Y; the reasons the school and company soon closed; the start in earnest of his career as a tap dance teacher, at Steps on Broadway around 1986; reminiscences of Brenda Bufalino and Fazil's Time Square Studio including an anecdote about Tony Waag; memories of seeing [Charles] Honi Coles and Tommy Tune perform in the musical My one and only; the tap routine set to "It's not where you start," from Seesaw; [sings an excerpt from the song "It's not where you start"]; the disbanding of the "stables" of dancers at film studios and absence of tap dancing from Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in the late 1950s; an anecdote about the rehearsal of a dance routine with the Nicholas Brothers (Harold and Fayard Nicholas) and Gene Kelly; his transition from teaching show tap to jazz and rhythm tap, in particular how Melba Huber (who regularly attended the annual Tap Extravaganza) was instrumental in this; receiving the Flo-Bert Award (in 2011); his student and mentee Lisa Maietta [Rybacki]; being engaged to teach dance as an adjunct professor at the Tisch School for the Arts, where he met Ayodele Casel; her decision to focus on jazz and rhythm tap; seeing Jimmy Slyde and Lon Chaney perform in the musical Black and blue and getting to know Slyde personally; the tap renaissance that began in the late 1970s and his own increasing interest in classic tap dance; Casel's goal of dancing with Savion Glover, which she realized when they danced together in Savion Glover Downtown; more on Slyde; learning Dunham technique through lessons with Katherine Dunham's student Ned Miller; more on his friendship with Huber who took him to various jazz tap-related events; exploring jazz tap more extensively after he left his teaching position at Cat 21 [Collaborative Arts Project 21] at NYU [New York University]; the resurfacing of tap dancers such as Leon Collins, in Boston (Massachusetts) and Bunny Briggs and Lon Chaney in Black and blue including Chaney's paddle and roll routine [brief interruption in recording]; Slyde's style of tap dance and his stamina even into his seventies; seeing Slyde perform a duet with Glover.
Streaming file 3 (approximately 1 hour and 36 minutes), August 13, 2020. Charles Goddertz speaks with Raquel Valiente about some of his more notable students including Liz Glover, Andrew Black, Paula Leggett Chase, Judine Richard, and Kazunori Kumagai; Valiente speaks about Goddertz as a teacher and mentor to herself and others; Goddertz speaks about teaching at Ballet Hispanico [of New York]; the VHS format video tapes he created for people to train at home; various aspects of teaching children; reason his plans to create a teaching manual were not realized; Goddertz shows a copy of a Tap Happy video with a photograph of himself on the cover as well as his necklace of a tap dancer in the same pose as Goddertz on the cover; the story behind the necklace; his first experience teaching overseas, to German students in Düsseldorf, Germany; [sings part of a song he used with the class]; his experience teaching and performing in a tap festival in Rome at the invitation of Erminia Moscato; participating in a tribute to Frank Sinatra at La Mama cabaret [La Mama Experimental Theatre]; performing in Switzerland on his way home from Germany where he met Roger M. Louis, author of Steptanz and found his now signature black and white shoes; an anecdote about getting his student Gil Stroman hired for a Tap Dogs tour; the circumstances that led to his appearing in the movie Enchanted (2007), including the audition where he danced with Carmen De Lavallade; Goddertz shows a photograph of himself with Liz Ramos, who was also in Enchanted; names others in the cast including Margery Beddow and Harvey Evans; tells an anecdote about Susan Stroman and Paula Leggett Chase's tabletop tap dance in pointe shoes in the musical Crazy for you; names some of the many people he has worked with in his career including Tina Ramirez at Ballet Hispanico, Danny Daniels, and Bernadette Peters; memories of Valiente as his student and as a performer; reflects on his career, in particular his good fortune in having been introduced to the jazz tap world and being able to teach tap dance; Goddertz shows and comments on photographs of himself, his sister Patty and a Rockette (in costume), of Jimmy Slyde, of Jack Stanly, and of himself in a head shot and in performance; how dance and dancers have changed since his younger days; having followed his heart throughout his life and hence having no regrets; his advice to young people on the ups and downs of show business as illustrated for example by Bob Fosse who bombed with Sweet Charity and made his comeback with Pippin; Buster Brown as an example of a great artist and a great human being; tells an anecdote about having had an idea for a show about Broadway chorus dancers before A chorus line; helping Paula Leggett Chase prepare for her audition in A chorus line; his granddaughter, who is already dancing at age 3; his gratitude to Valiente, Cassie Mey, and the Library for the Performing Arts for including him in the Dance Oral History Project.

Alternative Title

Dance Oral History Project.
Dance Audio Archive.

Subject

Genre/Form

Video recordings.
Oral histories.

Note

Interview with Charles Goddertz (in New York, N,Y.) conducted remotely by Raquel Valiente (in Jersey City, New Jersey) on August 10, 11, and 13, 2020, for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3487
As of March 2023, the video recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The video files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Funding (note)

The creation of this recording was made possible in part by a bequest from Carl Schlesinger.

Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3487

OCLC

1351395738

Author

Goddertz, Charles, Interviewee.

Title

Interview with Charles Goddertz, 2020/ Conducted remotely by Raquel Valiente on August 10, 11 and 13, 2020; Producer: Dance Oral History Project.

Imprint

2020

Playing Time

044900

Type of Content

spoken word

two-dimensional moving image

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

video

computer

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

video file

Restricted Access

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Event

Recorded for for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 2020, August 10, 11, and 13 New York (N.Y.) and Jersey City, New Jersey.

Funding

The creation of this recording was made possible in part by a bequest from Carl Schlesinger.

Connect to:

Added Author

Valiente, Raquel, Interviewer.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3487

*MGZDOH 3487

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