I started dancing when I was two.

I always had rhythm.

I always looked for the camera and I was always the ham.

The youngest child, and I just knew that it was part of me.

Ever since I was born.

My father took tap lessons when he was young, and so he enrolled me in the local dance school as part of the preschool program.

Just for the heck of it, because he did when he was young, he didn't know I'd get attached to it.

It's gonna be hard to leave, but I think it's going to be.

It's going to be good.

I'm ready.

I've never been more ready in my life.

And as a freshman year, I think you're ready to go out and face the world.

But until you hit at this point in your life, you're really not ready.

So here I come.

Oklahoma City University is famous for beauty.

The school's three Miss Americas Jane Jarreau, Susan Powell and Shantell Smith are honored here on campus.

And now the beauty of what's being taught here is getting just as much recognition.

Pick and up Tom Day portable Tripod A portable, very big part of your Joe Rowan speaks a different language at times.

The language of dance and move your shoulder a long neck because that sets you up for your peak turn.

That's it.

Big, big, big, big play.

I had always wanted to bring respect to American triple threat dancers, and triple threat means that you can be a singer, dancer, actor.

There were places where actors and singers could be involved in American show business and still get a good liberal arts education, but most universities, at least to my knowledge, were involved with ballet and modern.

In her performing days, Joe Rowan was world class a prima ballerina, dancing at venues around the globe.

The world really was her stage.

It was then that she became fascinated with a certain state out in the middle of America.

I was in New York and other centers of performance excellence and found great, well-trained performers who were also really nice people and many of them, I mean, a majority of them were from Oklahoma.

So I was wondering what was going on in Oklahoma.

And then I had the good luck to be able to come out and see the land and meet the people.

And I fell in love with Oklahoma and the people.

She wanted to put her knowledge as a performer to use.

So almost 25 years ago, she became a professor when she and her husband, John Bedford, now the school's dean, founded the department and welcomed two students to campus.

Today, almost 200 dancers are involved in the program each year.

Now, you know, I'm not going to let you go to another teacher.

So I mean, this is a very good class.

I consider myself a professor, not a teacher.

The student is the teacher.

I will explain, and I will be their cheerleader, but I expect them to absorb and be as focused on their success in the business as I am.

And they do a wonderful job of that.

She really cares about you, and she's just she gives you the chance to figure out things on your own and you know, take what she has that she's giving you, that she wants you to specifically do, but also gives you a chance to do it on your own.

Two, three.

She's brilliant.

She's younger every day.

She keeps up with us.

She can dance circles around all of us.

And in her class every day.

We have just a lesson on who you are, who you should be, how you should treat your fellow professional dancers.

Joe Rollins, another reason that I came here, besides the fact that she's a legend in all aspects of dance, people in South Georgia who don't know a whole lot about dance.

A lot of them have actually heard of Joe.

And now that's a challenge to be able to fill that music.

She is, after all, the collegiate dance teacher of the year at a university recognized as the best dance school in America.

Well, we're very successful in what we do, and I'm glad that America has focus on other different dance styles.

But when it comes to preparing people to go into show business, we do it.

And it's not just people who are performers, it's show and it's business.

OCU’s and Lacey School of American Dance and Arts Management trains students to work behind the scenes, too.

They work in a real ticket office, selling seats to their own shows and go jam go.

Their pedagogy classes prepare them for future days outside the spotlight when they might be teaching dance to youngsters.

Cat in the hat students assume the roles of teacher and children.

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456.

My biggest dream for sure is Broadway.

Have a name and lights and all that and, being successful in that and if not as a side job or anything else, I would like to teach dancing since I do love children.

And the great thing about OSU is that they give us that opportunity as well, to be able to learn how to teach with our pedagogy classes and our ways of cooperating with each other.

Very good class.

Students learn not just how to live life as a dancer, but how to live life.

Period.

One of the.

That's probably the biggest thing I've learned since I've been here is just that's what that's what being a teacher is about.

And that's what being a professional is about.

And that's what loving what you do and having a passion for what you do is about.

What you hit it.

Yes.

That's what I'm talking about.

Use those arms.

You all do.

So okay, we grab those, smack yourself in the.

We really want that passion for performing and for teaching.

Fills tap master, Robert Reed.

Well, it's a joy to pass it on.

You got to pass on the art form and it is an art form, as you can hear the musicality of it, the tonality of it.

You know, anything that a drummer can do with his hands, I can do it with my feet.

All of the hoofers can do with their feet, any kind of rhythm that there is, you know?

So the joy comes from seeing the kid's face light up that they can do this with their feet.

You know, all of a sudden they didn't think they could do that.

Oh, yeah.

Mr.

Reed, oh man, Mr.

Reed brings something to the school that that you couldn't get any at any other university.

It's.

He seems to have his own style of teaching.

He learned from the best of the best.

And he teaches us like they taught him.

He's very low to the floor with tap.

He's, very much about listening to the rhythm, learning the rhythm instead of just watching it or calling the steps names.

It's about art and it's about life.

It's not about steps.

Here at the university, we don't teach steps or just steps.

We teach life and how to dance.

We teach you to become an artist.

We teach you to to, to do passion, not just a bunch of steps.

More than any other form of dance, tap allows you to express yourself freely, to show your emotions, almost as if you were talking to someone without using words.

And this is a conversation.

This is a conversation.

This is not.

This is a conversation.

I'm talking to you.

You hear the flavor.

You hear is is talking to you.

It's not just a bunch of stuff.

It's a tonality.

You know?

It's like when we talk, we dance like we talk.

Well, some of us have a bigger vocabulary than others.

Robert Reed is a big believer in passing on the language of tap.

He's doing it for his students and for his son.

He likes to stop by class once in a while and talk, so to speak.

Yeah.

It's the rhythm of life, you know, the whole everything goes to a rhythm.

And when you find a rhythm in tap, you find the rhythm of life.

It's like no other feeling in the world.

It's like heaven.

And we talk about the tap guys at the end of the class, you know, and we talk about remembering, you know, the past because the past goes full circle.

L is for the way you look at me.

O is for the old.

In 1965, Arthur Duncan began tap dancing on The Lawrence Welk Show.

He was the only person on network television carrying on the tradition of tap and bringing it into living rooms every week.

Amazingly, in order to get perfect sound, Duncan recorded his tap dance without music one day and then had to recreate it perfect later in the week when the band was on stage.

So in tap dancing, you got to match every tap that's down there.

You have a lot of ear taps.

So it was it was a little difficult trying to set a routine and remember what you did for the following Tuesday.

But, but but it worked out pretty good.

It it taught us a lot of discipline.

Arthur Duncan is one of those tap gods Robert Reed students think about at the end of each class this spring.

They got to meet him.

Arthur Duncan is your artistic father.

He is a creator of what you are learning and a promoter of what you will do with the rest of your life, which is to make people happy.

The night before, he had been in the audience for the American Spirit dance company Spring Show, a rousing performance featuring several dance numbers ranging from Broadway to ballet and to I Love You, my old, yeah, River deep.

I'll try.

It was Duncan's first trip to Oklahoma City and his first exposure to what is being accomplished at OCU.

It was incredible.

It was one of the greatest shows I've ever seen in my life.

I've hit top drawer.

It's Broadway.

Broadway right here in Oklahoma City.

University just had nothing better.

This show could take it as it was last night, and set it in any theater in New York City, and it'd be a hit.

High praise from a tap God.

And then the ultimate compliment, Arthur Duncan, being honored by the school as a living treasure, would perform on the same stage with the students on the final night of the spring show.

If you come down to the river, I bet you're gonna find some people who live and you don't have to worry.

Yep, you got no money.

People on the river.

Will keep on tight.

And prosperity.

I it for the seniors.

It was among their last performances at a school where they've learned so much.

Tell me heartily.

But I think it's going to be.

It's going to be good.

I'm ready.

I've never been more ready when there's a rush from the adrenaline rush.

It's what I do best.

It's what.

It's what I was born to do.

So whether it's singing, dancing, anything, that's what I was born to do.

They have come here to the middle of America from all around the country to dance on top of a mountain of respect.

Built by Joe Rowan, John Bedford and the leadership at OCU, a mountain that keeps lifting everyone higher.

I feel I am an Oklahoman because my heart is here, and this is where I want to work and train people to bring respect to American dance throughout the world.