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“In searching for other people’s history, you realize you must tend to your own, as well,” [Ayodele Casel] says. “Tap dancers deal with time in a very specific way artistically. This show is about how we deal with it on a larger continuum.”

“I just felt like as a woman of color in these tap shoes, that it was my responsibility to bring them with me so that as folks get to learn about me, they also inevitably learn about them,” [said Ayodele Casel].

“El tap dance no es solo entretenimiento…es parte de mi legado ancestral. Siempre ha sido mi objetivo transformar la forma en que el público ve el tap, mostrar que no es solo una forma de entretenimiento, sino un lenguaje de resistencia, cultura e identidad”, agregó [Ayodele] Casel.

“I have charged my life and career with speaking and uplifting the names of the Black women tap dancers that were very prominent in the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s, whose names you do not know,” Casel says.

“I see a lot of myself in Ayo, and so it’s really inspiring to see her tell her story so bravely and openly and honestly,” [performer Afra] Hines said. “It’s also been really interesting and exciting to learn about these women and dig into who they were, and I feel inspired by them as well.”

“I always say everyone who sees me is going to know who [these dancers] are,” Casel said. “I’m going to bring them into every space that I occupy.”And by chronicling her own life alongside theirs in Diary of a Tap Dancer, Casel secures her legacy as a tap legend in her own right.

Though relatively unknown today, during the Harlem renaissance and into the 1930s and ’40s, many Black women singers and dancers were known to be “showstoppers.” Cora LaRedd, who performed for a white-only audience at the Cotton Club in Harlem, was one.