Don’t you find that intoxicating scent of history in courthouse deed rooms? We do!!!! Digging into historic troves again -with the invaluable tutelage of preservationist E. Lane Gresham—as I assemble the amazing, entrepreneurial, intentional distaff side of Buddy Bradley’s family.
Of course, following instructions at the door (swipe), we returned our weapons to the car to gain admittance. It was worth it.
Thank you again, EDH, for facilitating all of this. Recreating a life takes a village.
I wish, however, I’d put on some lipstick…
#buddybradley
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#meandmyBuddy
#searchingforBuddyBradley
#tracingBuddyBradley
#travelsinthesouth
So if your father is a Baptist and your mother a Methodist, what will you be? My research companion ( Buddy Bradley’s distant cousin) caught me mid-sentence in the historic C.M.E.Daes Chapel in Clarkesville, Georgia. (Like Bradley’s mother’s people, the Daes family were also free people of color. )As to religious upbringing, I suspect the religion of Buddy’s more-present mother prevailed, so it is possible Buddy Bradley was christened in this very space. Once again, I feel I am following on sacred ground -the (non-tapping) footsteps of Bradley. BTW it’s called buck dancing in these parts!
Thank you, EDH, for opening this journey for me!
#buddybradley
#meandmybuddy
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#searchingforBuddyBradley
#tracingBuddyBradley
#daeschapel
@habershamcountyga @clarkesvillegeorgia
Looking at dance through the lens of an Empire.
#buddybradley
#meandmybuddy
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
A minute in Paris. With new best girl Delphina Hurley.
Back from London research! Now tapping and talking (Buddy Bradley, bien sur!) with the great Tony Waag at the AmericanTap Dance Foundation.
#meandmybuddy
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#buddybradley
@atdforg
The quiet moment before resuming research. The scent of summer in the air.
#meandmybuddy
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#tracingbuddybradley
#buddybradley
Westminster Archives now closed for day. Taking stock in Saint James Park. Mapping out tomorrow.
#buddybradley
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#tracingbuddybradley
#westminsterarchives
#meandmybuddy
The bewitching hour : between lunch and flight. A stroll through the Blaschka glass flowers at the Harvard Museum on Natural History. Commissioned for the study of botany at the turn of the last century of a father and son team of glass artisans, it took 20 meticulous years to complete the collection.
#buddybradley and the byways
Running to lunch with my editor and passed Leavitt and Peirce , where we used to purchase Rothman’s cigarettes—they, of course, conferred instant worldliness! Still charmed with this timeless facade although I and everyone else I know have long stopped toying with smoking. So how ever does a tobacco store survive?
#inpusuitofbuddybradley #tracingbuddybradley #buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
Feeling festive on the 159 bus up Regent Street. Terrific interview, more insights, anecdotes and angles. Buddy Bradley rising from the two-dimensional page to become a three dimensional being.
#buddybradley
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#meandmybuddy
#tracingbuddybradley
Slipping into the Crush Room at Covent Garden —as iconic as Oliver Messel’s sets for Sleeping Beauty.
More heavy lifting—with a grand jeté !—at the BFI. Former Royal Ballet ballerina Professor Geraldine Morris, has analyzed Buddy Bradley’s influence on Frederic Ashton’s choreography. Now we turn the tables to search for Ashton elements in Bradley’s work. Witness the expansive arms, luxuriant backs, and lush épaulement mixed with his own signature fast feet. Thank you, Geraldine and Basement Steve, for another great day of research.
#buddybradley
#meandmybuddy
#tapdancehistory
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#tracingbuddybradley
Rewards at the Ivy after a morning of heavy lifting (literally—swipe!)!at the British Film Institute. With choreographer and Buddy Bradley acolyte Ralph Tobert.
#buddybradley
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#meandmybuddy
#tracingbuddybradley
#madabouttheboy #noelcoward
Do you ever feel like the lovelorn Freddy in My Fair Lady? Tracing Buddy Bradley’s footsteps in London in wonder.
Cut off at the bottom: Regency architecture by John Nash.
#buddybradley
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#meandmybuddy
#tracingbuddybradley
#johnnash #johnnasharchitect #parkcrescentlondon #regencyarchitecture
This is the convoluted threading involved to see even 30 seconds of dance footage! But of course it’s perfectly fitting I should be doing this because, in the 1920s, Buddy Bradley, enamored of movies, studied to be a film projectionist. I had to take a photo as a reminder of how it all worked but by the end if the day I’d nailed it .
#buddybradley
#meandmybuddy
#buddybradleyjazzchoreographer
#tracingbuddybradley
#dancinginthedark @britishfilminstitute
Excavating Buddy Bradley choreography footage
with my bestie ´Basement Steve,’ who reigns over the BFI screening rooms. It’s a complicated process ( see next post) and I couldn’t possibly manage without Steve’s tutelage.
#buddybradley #buddybradleyjazzchoreographer #tracingbuddybradley #dancinginthe dark @dior @britishfilminstitute
Yesterday the pursuit of Buddy Bradley led to a pub under the white cliffs of Dover where a choreographer and a dancer turned actor, students of Bradley in the 1950s, told the tales and divulged the details. Some takeaways: Buddy Bradley thrived in the studio, surrounded by those passionate about dance, imparting his secrets with call-and-response demonstrations, always winding up with a killer combination that confounded his acolytes. What did he wear in the studio? (Yes, my question!! ) Answer: elegant navy suede tap shoes with perfectly calibrated taps and a gray jumper with yellow banding. Confabbing with my two favorite English hoofers and @annetteuk, my comrade in arms in the pursuit of the elusive Buddy Bradley.
#buddybradley #buddybradleyjazzchoreographer #tracingbuddybradley #myfavoritehoofers
Pressing “reset” after relentless book research—accompanied by a Puligny-Montrachet.
Adventures in book research. The parking lot of my hotel in Livingston, Alabama.
#storiesfromthesouth #tracingbuddybradley #buddybradleyjazzchoreographer #buddybradley #adventuresinresearch #openroad
Buddy Bradley’s ancestors banked here, in a two room structure in the Black Belt of Alabama, whose architecture reflects the New Englanders who flocked to this bend along a river in the 1830s and turned it into a town. By 1848, the National Bank of Gainesville was so prosperous due to the cotton trade that the US government granted it the right to print money. After Emancipation Buddy’s grandfather turned his talents to trade and eventually obtained a wholesale liquor license, catapulting him from local merchant to distributor. Today, the town is quiet, Buddy’s people are long gone, and the forgotten bank whispers stories to those who want to hear.
#buddybradley #buddybradleyjazzchoreographer #tracingbuddybradley #storiesofthesouth