Paul Draper (dancer)
Encyclopedia
Paul Draper was a noted American tap dance
Tap dance
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sound of one's tap shoes hitting the floor as a percussive instrument. As such, it is also commonly considered to be a form of music. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses more on the...

r and choreographer. Born into an artistic, socially prominent New York family, the nephew of Ruth Draper
Ruth Draper
Ruth Draper was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues.-Early life and family:...

 was an innovator in the arts
The arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...

. Despite the pressure his family put on him to become an engineer, Paul’s love for dance persisted and ultimately won out. His passion and unique style led him to international stardom.

Draper’s training in tap dance was very minimal. He was a self-taught tapper, having taken only six tap dancing lessons in his life, and he used his knowledge bank of ballet-based materials to influence his tap style. He learned tap at Tommy Nip’s Broadway dance school in 1930. Much to the dismay of his family, Paul set off for London as a teenager hoping to find work as a tap dancer shortly after being introduced to the art form. He scraped together a living performing flashy routines in Europe and the United States, then enrolled in the School of American Ballet
American Ballet
The American Ballet was the first professional ballet company George Balanchine created in the United States. The company was founded with the help of Lincoln Kirstein and Edward Mortimer Morris Warburg, managed by Alexander Merovitch and populated by students of Kirstein and Balanchine's School of...

 and realized the possibilities of combining tap and classical ballet.

In 1932, Draper made his solo debut in London. He introduced his new “Ballet-Tap” dance form and gained much notoriety for his unique style. He danced to a variety of music styles, but often incorporated Classical music into his routines. By 1937, he was performing at such venues as the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel and the Rainbow Room. Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 followed, then Broadway and a film version of William Saroyan
William Saroyan
William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...

's Time of Your Life
Time of Your Life
Time of Your Life may refer to:Literature* The Time of Your Life, a play by William Saroyan* Time of Your Life , based on the Doctor Who TV seriesFilm and television...

(1948). In 1940, he teamed up with Larry Adler
Larry Adler
Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him...

, a virtuoso harmonicist. The two became a world-famous act, performing together until 1949. They appeared as regulars at New York's City Center. The act finally disbanded when jobs dried up after they were blacklisted as Communist sympathizers. (Adler, in response to these false charges, moved to the United Kingdom). This put a halt on Draper’s career.
In 1955, Draper returned to the stage performing in Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat at the Phoenix Theater. Jerome Moross
Jerome Moross
Jerome Moross was an American-born composer for the stage, and a composer, conductor and orchestrator for motion pictures.-Biography:...

’s Gentlemen, Be Seated became another piece Draper could add to his resume in the 1960’s. Draper also choreographed pieces for George Kleinsinger
George Kleinsinger
George Kleinsinger was an American composer from San Bernardino, California, best known for his collaboration with Paul Tripp on the 1940s children's song "Tubby the Tuba". He also wrote the music for the phonograph record Archy & Mehitabal and the Broadway musical based on the record, Shinbone...

’s Archy and Mehitabel
Shinbone Alley
Shinbone Alley is a musical with a book by Joe Darion and Mel Brooks, lyrics by Darion, and music by George Kleinsinger. Based on archy and mehitabel, a series of New York Tribune columns by Don Marquis, it focuses on poetic cockroach Archy, alley cat Mehitabel, and her relationships with...

at Goodspeed Opera House, and performed in the Broadway musical Come Summer
Come Summer
Come Summer is a Broadway musical with a book and lyrics by Will Holt and music by David Baker, based on Rainbow on the Road by Esther Forbes and vocal arrangements by Trude Rittman . The original Broadway production opened on March 18, 1969 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre starring Cathryn Damon, Ray...

during the sixties.

Draper took a hiatus from mainstream performances in the late 1960s and began to teach in the theater department at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania until 1978. He was seldom seen in concert dance during this decade, but did manage to make appearances at and create pieces for the American Dance Festival
American Dance Festival
The American Dance Festival is a six and four-week school for dance and a six-week summer festival of modern dance performances, currently held at Duke University and the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, North Carolina....

 and Lee Theodore
Lee Theodore
Lee Theodore was a Broadway director/choreographer and performer. Lee appeared as Anybodys in the original production of "West Side Story" and in "Tenderloin" and "The King And I". As a choreographer, Theodore created dances for "Baker Street," "Darling Of The Day," "Flora, The Red Menance" and...

’s American Dance Machine
American Dance Machine
The American Dance Machine was a theatrical dance company created by Lee Theodore, which played at the Century Theatre, opening Jun 14, 1978, running 199 performances. The show was a "Living Archive" of Broadway theatre dance; great theatre dances saved from oblivion...

.


Draper married Heidi Vosseler
Heidi Vosseler
Heide Vosseler was a European-born ballerina and member of George Balanchine's first American ballet company, American Ballet, from 1935 to 1938...

, a ballerina for George Balanchine's first American ballet company, on June 23, 1941, in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

. Miss Vosseler lived with him in Europe until they returned to the United States in 1954 (they had three daughters.) She died from lung cancer in 1992, leaving Paul a widower until he died in 1996 at age 86 from emphysema.

Beginnings

After immigrating to the United States with his family at the age of six, Draper ran away from home at the age of 17 to dig ditches at Woodstock in New York. His aunt persuaded him to turn his life around by taking an engineering course at Polytechnic Institute, but he ended up quitting after only one year. He later started to work odd jobs around New York. He was an assistant music critic, and briefly became an instructor at an Arthur Murray
Arthur Murray
Arthur Murray was a dance instructor and businessman, whose name is most often associated with the dance studio chain that bears his name....

 dance school. Paul Draper then began his extensive and mostly self-taught tap dancing career.

Style

Draper performed to classical music which made him a unique performer. Often his music was performed live. He tapped out “intricate rhythms to classical music” according to the L.A. Times, earning him the accolade of “aristocrat of tap.” The New York Times said that “He has evolved a routine which combines tap with techniques of classical ballet and which allows him to base his one-man choreographies on any type of music, classical, folk and popular.”He would also occasionally perform with Harmonica player Larry Adler
Larry Adler
Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him...

 while on tour. His rhythmical style of tap appears effortless despite his complicated routines. He learned how to tap dance from taking six tap lessons at Tommy Nip’s Broadway dance school, but then enrolled in the School of American Ballet
School of American Ballet
The School of American Ballet is one of the most famous classical ballet schools in the world and is the associate school of the New York City Ballet, a leading international ballet company based at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. The school trains students from the...

. His trademark style incorporates ballet vocabulary and technique into his tap dancing.

Views

Paul Draper struggled with people believing that tap dancing was not a legitimate art form. Some people put it on the same level as baton twirling or rope-skipping, so he was determined to convince the world that tap dancing is a credible art form. Draper was ashamed of how tap was being taught in conventions and institutions and did not like how it was being performed. He thought that anyone could be taught a tap routine, but not everyone could be taught how to dance. Paul Draper was more invested in the performance and entertaining aspects of tap dancing than the actual technique.

Paul Draper believed that the future of dance depended on the current tap teachers and believed that there were not many sincere and hard-working tap teachers. He believed that there was a sentiment of embarrassment around performing tap, and he believed that as long as the attitude of the teachers, students, and dancers towards tap dancing stayed the same, then tap would not flourish. He believed that if a dancer does not want to move an audience, then he or she should find a profession where there is no obligation to do so. Draper advised dance teachers on how to improve tap dancing in schools in order to insure the future of the art form.

Family

Paul Draper was born to a prominent family in Florence, Italy on October 25, 1909. His family was an artistic one as his aunt, Ruth Draper
Ruth Draper
Ruth Draper was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues.-Early life and family:...

, was an author, lecturer, and entertainer. She entertained renowned guests like Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...

, and Norman Douglas
Norman Douglas
George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind.-Life:Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria . His mother was Vanda von Poellnitz...

 in the family salon. His great-grandfather founded The New York Sun and his aunt was a monologuist. His father was a concert singer. His parents divorced shortly after moving to the United States and Paul seemed to be passed around from one relative’s household to the next. He married Helen Vosseler, a ballerina for the American Ballet Theater. She died in 1992, but birthed three children with Paul: Pamela, Susan, and Kate.

Another relative was Raimund Sanders Draper
Raimund Sanders Draper
Flying Officer Raimund Sanders Draper , known as "Smudge", was an American volunteer World War II Royal Air Force pilot of No. 64 Squadron...

, a heroic WWII pilot.

Communist accusations

In the 1950s, Draper was accused of affiliating with the Communist party. A routine of his was to appear on CBS’s “Toast of the Town,” but was cut out of the segment due to protests the station received. During this period, Draper was forced to put a stop to his tour because many television programs and hotels felt they could not host such a controversial figure. He filed a libel suit against a Connecticut housewife who claimed he was a Communist, but still received negative press. Draper left the United States following this scandal and lived in Switzerland for three years. The LA Times claims “he later resumed his career but never recaptured his original popularity.”

Performances

|event=Crystal Nocturne at Radio City Hall}}|event=Thumbs Up at St. James Theater on Broadway (Broadway debut)}}|event=appeared in the film Colleen
Colleen (1936 film)
Colleen is a 1936 Warner Bros. musical film directed by Alfred E. Green. It stars Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, and Joan Blondell.-Plot:Colleen is the manager of a dress shop named "The Ames Company", owned by Donald Ames. They try to keep Uncle Cedric from working, because he'll ruin the company....

}}|event=I Got Rhythm (music by Larry Adler) at various New York theaters}}|event=appeared in a short-reel film with Lee Dixon
Lee Dixon (actor)
Lee Dixon was an actor in 1930s and 1940s. He appeared in Hollywood musicals and other films, as well as on the Broadway stage.-Career:...

 called Six Hits and a Miss}}|event=Tap Dancer Supreme at the KRNT Radio Theater (music by Larry Adler)}}|event=appeared in the film The Time of Your Life
The Time of Your Life
The Time of Your Life is a 1939 five-act play by American playwright William Saroyan. The play is the first drama to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The play opened 25 October 1939 at the Booth Theatre in New York City...

}}|event=All In One at various New York theaters}}|event=reunion performance with Larry Adler at Carnegie Hall}}

Death

Paul Draper died September 20, 1996 in Woodstock, New York
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census.The Town of Woodstock is in the northern part of the county...

 at the age of 86. The cause of death was emphysema
Emphysema
Emphysema is a long-term, progressive disease of the lungs that primarily causes shortness of breath. In people with emphysema, the tissues necessary to support the physical shape and function of the lungs are destroyed. It is included in a group of diseases called chronic obstructive pulmonary...

. His three daughters, Pamela, Susan, and Kate, and two grandchildren survive him. His family currently resides in New York.

External links

  • http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/seibert_su05.html
  • http://www.tapdance.org/tap/people/tapbios1.htm
  • http://www.streetswing.com/histmai2/d2pdrap1.htm
  • Draper, Paul, and Fran Avallone. On Tap Dancing. New York: M. Dekker, 1978


Obituaries

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