Oklahoma City University is proud to announce John Bedford, dean of the School of American Dance and Arts Management, and Jo Rowan, department chair, will receive the Preservationists Award at the St. Louis Tap Festival, which runs from July 30 to Aug. 4. The St. Louis Tap Festival is one of the two premiere tap dance festivals in the nation and will be held at the Sheraton St. Louis City Center.

Bedford and Rowan will receive the award for their contributions to the preservation of tap dance and the national and historic impact OCU's degree program has had on the field.

This year, the festival will also honor Bunny Briggs, who worked with Count Basie and Duke Ellington, and Ernest Brown, who was half of the celebrated vaudeville duo "Cook and Brown" and appeared in the film, "The Cotton Club."

"Jo and John have struggled for over 20 years not just to build a dance program with a national reputation, but to do the right thing by the art form and its pioneers," said Robert Reed, founder and organizer of the St. Louis Tap Festival. "I can relate to that struggle."

"It is very rare to find people in a position to preserve the dance form in academia who also respect the styles developed by legendary performers and teachers that often grew out of street performance rather than any kind of training in the classical sense," said Reed. "Jo Rowan has a special talent for accepting different styles without putting any preconceived notions onto them."

"What John Bedford and Jo Rowan have done to keep tap dance alive is important in a historical sense for a lot of reasons, one of which is their willingness to break down barriers between the races," said Reed. "Most of the people who pioneered American tap dance were black. These were the folks who taught people like Fred Astaire to dance in the movies. Through the Living Treasure awards program they started at OCU, John and Jo have done so much to recognize the contribution made by extremely talented performers who have not had the recognition they deserved."

Reed said that, in addition to the Living Treasure award program, Bedford and Rowan's commitment to building a degree around tap dance has played a significant role in the turnaround of the dance form nationally. In a recent interview in the dean's office at the OCU School of American Dance and Arts Management, John Bedford and Jo Rowan talked about the national struggle to keep tap dance alive.

"In the 1950s, tap dance began a pronounced decline," said Rowan. "The dance form was associated with the kind of number that tended to bring an audience to its feet and stop the show, but did not add to the plot. Then, 'Oklahoma!' came along and ballet suddenly displaced tap in musicals because dance was now growing out of the story and used as an integral part of the plot."

"Some authorities believe that a tax levied on clubs with dancing was another deciding factor in tap's marked decline in the 1950s. "The combination of the changed role of dance in musicals and taxation of clubs were practically a death knell for tap," said Bedford.

Eventually modern dance was introduced to university curricula. Universities and colleges started adding ballet degrees in the 1960's. In 1981, Bedford and Rowan created a curriculum based on the American dance forms of tap and jazz. In recent years, other universities have begun including tap and jazz classes in their curricula, but OCU remains unique for its major emphasis on and respect for these American dance styles.

"Also, an attitude prevailed that ballet and modern dance were more important and artistic," said Rowan. "Ballet is a European form that was originally underwritten by the aristocracy. Because American art forms like jazz music and jazz and tap dance are grounded firmly in popular entertainment, coming from the experience of the common man, academics looked down their noses at them. Jazz and tap dance have every bit as much artistic validity as other dance forms. Frankly, because they arose from popular culture, there are myriad ethnic influences that give them vigor other forms can lack. The major influences are African and Irish, but other cultures also contributed to the mix."

"They are very inclusive," said Reed. "Jo and John listen to people. Jo is a trained ballet dancer and she has teaching Broadway style tap dancing down pat, yet she's still open to including other variations, like rhythm tap."

One reason OCU's School of American Dance and Arts Management could build such a successful program is a departmental philosophy that imposes rigorous standards of professionalism and discipline on its students. "Anyone can teach students dance steps," said Rowan. "We teach students to be dancers. There's a big difference between someone who is merely talented and skilled and a person who can be relied upon to both perform well and interact with others in a professional manner."

Reed agrees that OCU's promotion of tap dance as a uniquely American art form has been crucial to its survival. "Once one university recognizes its validity," he said, "that affects how others consider it. OCU led the way, forcing other universities to add American dance forms to their curricula."

Rowan believes the mechanics of tap dancing are like a language. When only a certain number of people speak a language fluently, it is in danger of dying. Linguists suggest that number is around 3,000 people. "Tap dancing as an art form came dangerously close to that level of participation before the renaissance of recent years," said Rowan. "Sure, there are films and books, but we could have lost the all-important human connection to the art form, which is so vital to what makes it uniquely American."

In the 1980s, Bedford and Rowan expressed this concern to OCU's former president Dr. Jerald Walker. "Walker got it," said Rowan. "He understood the need to keep tap alive, and so we became one of only a few universities nationwide to focus on tap at all, certainly the only one that offered a degree in tap."

"When I started at OCU, they wanted me to teach ballet and modern dance. Well, I had just come back from Russia, where everyone desperately wanted to learn American tap and jazz dance. There were no degrees in tap dance offered by American schools."

Times have changed. The U.S. Congress designated May 25 National Tap Dance Day, a date intended to memorialize Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.

I think OCU's contribution to preserving tap as an American art form will be recognized increasingly as time goes by," said Bedford. "But the St. Louis Tap Festival is among the first to acknowledge our role in keeping tap alive."

The St. Louis Tap Festival's Heritage Preservation Award recognizes today's practitioners of tap would not exist without those who provided support, encouragement, and venues for tap dance over the last several decades. Bedford and Rowan were the first in the nation to devote a significant portion of a bachelor's degree's requirements to tap dance. OCU actually developed a syllabus with 10 levels of tap dance proficiency, ranging from novice to pro. Over the last 20 years, this program has made significant contributions to reestablishing tap as an active and valued art form nationally.

OCU's School of American Dance and Arts Management boasts a nationally competitive program that also holds students to a higher academic and disciplinary standard.