Rusty Frank

Rusty Frank

Rusty Frank
Born February 25
Hollywood
Occupation Lindy hop dancer, tap dancer, choreographer, producer, teacher, author, historian

Rusty Frank is an American tap dancer, producer, writer, choreographer, lindy hopper, historian and tap-dance preservationist.

Early life

Rusty Frank was born in Hollywood, California and raised in Los Angeles. She began dancing at age six, inspired as a child by watching classic American films of the 1930s and '40s, especially those of Shirley Temple.[1] Frank attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in Environmental Planning and Public Policy and graduated with double honors. She then attended the University of San Francisco, where she received her Master's degree in Public Administration.[2]

Career

Rusty Frank runs the largest swing dance program in Los Angeles through her swing dance school, Lindy by the Sea, and her weekly swing dance, Rusty's Rhythm Club (both of these operations were founded in 1998 with Peter Flahiff, who ran the business with her until the end of 2002.).

In 1989, Frank founded On Tap, through which she produces instructional-historical tap and swing dance DVDs.

Shows

While attending college, Frank began dancing in stage productions, and her first show was "Minnie's Boys," followed by "Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America." In 1978, she moved to San Francisco, California and by the early 1980s was appearing regularly in musical shows, including: "Dames At Sea," "Babes In Arms," "42nd Street" with Diablo Civic Light Opera (DLOC), "5,6,7,8," and "Mack And Mabel."

She has tap danced professionally over the years with The San Francisco Tap Troupe, Six Feet a Tap Trio (Wayne Doba, Rodney Price), Pedal Extremities (Walter Freeman, Mark Mendonca, Michael Rainey), Tapology (Patti Meagher), The Rhythm Rascals (Walter Freeman), Mulligan and Whitmore "Tops in Taps" (Chester Whitmore), The Rhythm Pals (Alfred Desio), and with Greg Gast.

In 1989, 1990 and 1991, Frank produced, directed, and danced in an all-star tap revue Jazz Tap! featuring the Nicholas Brothers, Savion Glover, Arthur Duncan, Jeni LeGon[3] and Brenda Bufalino. The show was performed at Kimball's East and the Sun Valley Lodge (where the movie "Sun Valley Serenade" took place).

In 1996, she began learning the Lindy Hop after she saw the English dance group The Jiving Lindy Hoppers perform. She partnered with world-renowned English lindy hopper Simon Selmon and moved to the United Kingdom for two years. She and Selmon made many appearances on television, in movies, on the radio, at festivals and special events. The team's high point came when they toured fifty-one European cities as the dance act for the big band stage show In The Mood – A Tribute to Glenn Miller.[4]

In the US, Frank has performed at such prestigious venues as Broadway's 42nd Street, at the Hollywood Bowl, at Disneyland and at the world-famous Derby in Hollywood.[5]

Currently, she regularly performs her tap dance routines at downtown Los Angeles's 1920s-themed nightclub Maxwell DeMille's Cicada Club,[6] housed inside the historic 1928 art deco James Oviatt Building. She teaches private and group dance lessons in Los Angeles and at international dance camps, works on her tap documentary and produces instructional dance DVDs.

Dancer

Frank studied under such tap-dance notables as her mentor Louis DaPron, Fayard Nicholas, Miriam Nelson, Gene Nelson, LaVaughn Robinson, Bob Scheerer, Lou Wills, Jr., Brenda Bufalino, Steve Condos, Dorothy Toy, Katherine Hopkins-Nicholas, Leonard Reed and Jon Zerby.[4]

Frank has studied under Lindy Hop legends Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, and her mentor, Jean Veloz.

Historian

In March 1995, Rusty's book TAP! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900–1955, was published by Da Capo Press.[2] Actor and tap dancer Gregory Hines wrote the foreword to the book, for which she interviewed 30 tap-dance luminaries, including Ann Miller, Shirley Temple and Donald O'Connor. She has contributed to the Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Oral History project, along with the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Dance, The American National Biography, the Great Danish Encyclopedia, the jazz history Jazz: The First Century, published by William Morrow and Company, and Discover Jazz, published by Pearson.

Rusty is producing a one-hour television special, TAP! Tempo of America. She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant to aid in making this dance documentary.

She has also appeared in numerous dance documentaries, including the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers box set documentary for Warner Home Video, the BBC's Fascinating Rhythms – The Story of Tap, and This Joint is Jumpin' for Bravo.[1] Rusty Frank is featured in Alive and Kicking, a feature-length documentary that takes an inside look into the people and culture of the Lindy Hop resurgence.

Awards and honors

References

External links

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