Gene Kelly

My favourite inspirational tapper of all time is Gene Kelly. I believe that when someone starts to embrace dancing, any kind of dancing, they are often inspired by someone very early in life.  There have been many great dancers that I grew up watching, but none of them inspired me more than Gene Kelly.  He had the unique combination of grace and athleticism that I have rarely seen since his time.
As much as things have changed in the past few years, I think there is still the stereotype that people place on male dancers, especially when they are kids.  It is labelled as effeminate, or boys are called sissies for taking dance classes. If you took dance classes as a boy in our neighbourhood, often these kids would come home with a bleeding nose.

With his masculine good looks and style of dancing, Gene Kelly made it a lifetime goal to get rid of this type of thinking by doing projects such as the following :

"His first foray into television was a documentary for NBC's Omnibus, Dancing is a Man's Game (1958) where he assembled a group of America's greatest sportsmen – including Mickey Mantle, Sugar Ray Robinson and Bob Cousy – and re-interpreted their moves choreographically, as part of his lifelong quest to remove the effeminate stereotype of the art of dance, while articulating the philosophy behind his dance style. It gained an Emmy nomination for choreography and now stands as the key document explaining Kelly's approach to modern dance." (Quote courtesy of Wikipedia)
One of my only regrets in life, is that I didn't follow my heart AND my ever moving feet which were always trying to imitate dancers like Gene, Fred, the Nicholas Brothers etc. by putting tacks on the bottom of my shoes and driving everyone around me absolutely crazy !

I think when parents see that their boys are excited about, or start copying dancers of their day at a very early age, they should encourage them to take lessons.  More often, especially the dads, parents encourage boys to play sports like hockey, football and soccer so their sons will grow up and "be a man". This type of thinking is slowly changing, but we still have a long way to go.

Gene Kelly showed the world that to be a great dancer, one also had to be a great athlete.  You only have to see any of his performances to believe this.  On YouTube you should check out his performance with the Nicholas Brothers in the classic number "Be a Clown", then tell me dancing is for sissies !

I have a studio promotional picture of Gene Kelly from "Singing in the Rain" which hangs in front of my desk, and, every once in a while, when I think maybe I should stop dancing, for various reasons, I just look at that
picture of Gene, hanging off of a lamppost, soaking wet, with the biggest smile on his face, and think, why would I want to stop something that brings me so much joy..... Gene Kelly, I thank you !