Within the April 1984 problem of Dance Journal, affiliate editor Joan Pikula spoke with Alfonso Ribeiro, Hinton Battle, and Alan Weeks, the trio of dancers main The Faucet Dance Child on Broadway.
The then-12-year-old Ribeiro, who starred as Willie Sheridan, the titular faucet dance child, advised us: “I’m in a position to get one thing inside me out in faucet dancing, simply actually take all of it and put it out into the open. Let my ft do the stuff, you already know?” Ribeiro shot to stardom within the wake of the function, although in the present day he’s higher referred to as Carlton, from “The Contemporary Prince of Bel-Air,” and as a current winner after which host of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Battle (who handed away this 12 months on the finish of January) was already a bona fide star when he took the showstopping function of Dipsy Bates, Sheridan’s uncle and faucet trainer: He’d been the unique Scarecrow in The Wiz at age 16, danced with Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, and discovered to faucet and gained a Tony for Subtle Girls. “To make your self a part of the actual type is the most important problem in working with totally different choreographers,” Battle stated. “I wish to dig into what I’m doing, see what the choreographer sees within the step, what provides it that specialness. I believe that’s why I used to be in a position to choose up faucet; it is steps, and there’s a way, however that’s solely half of it. The essence of it’s extra essential. I may exit and do steps all night time, however it wouldn’t imply something. It’s that different factor that I at all times consider as the important thing. And I actually assume that’s helped me perceive not solely faucet however other forms of dancing as properly.”
And Weeks, The Faucet Dance Child’s Daddy Bates, was solely in his mid-30s however may boast a 27-year profession working with the likes of Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Michael Bennett, Michael Kidd, and Matt Mattox. “Present enterprise is my life—I simply love the enterprise, all aspects of it. However Broadway—dancing—is my past love,” he stated. “My solely purpose is to be working. The desires change, the work is ever current. And for those who can keep wholesome sufficient simply to work, I believe success and all these desires that individuals fathom up will routinely come.”
