Five GUYS Named Joe - profiles of five jazz dance choreographers including female choreographer Jo Rowan

Dance Magazine, August, 1999 by K.C. Patrick

Five pillars of the jazz dance world in profile

Jazz has lost its shame. Tawdry no more, jazz dance has legitimatized itself on Broadway and opera house stages, into college curricula, is studied and awarded degrees in universities. Split leaps and pelvic thrusts are just part of the pedagogy. Does that mean that jazz is meant to be shelved with the classics? Jazz dance can't be considered as just a passing fancy. Jazz will be around as long as it is interesting, exciting, and relevant. It is the rhythm and pulse of the human heart that is reflected in the music and the dance. Here are five not-so-ordinary Joes who helped build, and continue to support, the jazz dance community.

JOE TREMAINE

Joe Tremaine began studying dance in northern Louisiana, then in Metairie, so near N'Orleans you could almost smell Bourbon Street and hear the horns. Dance study was mostly ballet, with some high kicks and struts, but the jazz dance vocabulary and training hadn't clearly evolved yet in many corners of the country. Young Tremaine had wit and speed and an extraordinary extension--and he was a tall guy, which put him in great demand for partner work. And he had that "gotta dance" fire in his belly that, after college, drew him to New York City.

Tremaine had done his time: performing whenever the opportunity presented itself and attending classes with master teachers on the caravan circuit such as Gus Giordano and Danny Hoctor, for whom he later taught.

In New York City, he joined the June Taylor Dancers and performed with them on television in The Jackie Gleason Show. Nightclub shows, were the venue of choice for employable contemporary dancers and the long-haired Tremaine danced and discovered his skill for choreographing for stars in clubs--glamorous and not-so--across the United States. Tremaine moved to L.A. to work in television and movies, including two years on the Jerry Lewis TV Variety show that filmed at NBC in Burbank, six months on the Carol Burnett Show, at the Hollywood Palace, and many specials featuring Jack Benny, the Smothers Brothers, Jonathan Winters, Sonny & Cher, and in the movie, Hello, Dolly! (directed by Gene Kelly). There was lots of work in Las Vegas and in Hollywood, so it was at the famed Moro-Landis studios that Joe Tremaine established his school, which was to become the home of a style known as West Coast jazz.

The style was fast, loose, and trendy, emphasizing good technique for safety and longevity, but mutating constantly to fit the needs of the ever-growing and demanding television and video markets for dancers. It incorporated the Giordano earth-based straight-at-you attitude and the Luigi always moving, always reaching style; but it pushed the boundaries, adding athletic funk and hip-hop to the standard jazz vocabulary of movement, and over-the-head kicks for men and women that became Tremaine's trademark. Youngsters who came to Los Angeles came to the Tremaine studios to take class from the teachers there and to be seen by working (and casting) choreographers.

After a little success, Tremaine also incorporated style into his personal image. Gone was the lank-haired lean and hungry look of the looking-for-work dancer/choreographer. In its place came the warm-syrup Southern-gentleman charm, but Southern California style--the latest. Perfectly tailored and groomed, but still with the extraordinary red shoe extended high above the latest hair style. He had put in his time on the way up and it showed; he was and is a believable model of a contemporary success.

He added teaching at a couple of California universities to his resume, and, with Julie Adler, longtime multiple studio owner, he founded what was to be the enormously successful Tremaine Dance Conventions. The conventions bring the most trendy jazz styles, teachers, and choreographers to sites on a national tour, along with some technique and basic classes. Originally a real-life audition at the convention's end not only trained dance students, but selected the scholarship winners to Tremaine's school in Hollywood, and which formed the basis for a student company. Now sizeable cash awards go to winners. Tremaine teaches at every point on the tour. The convention tour reaches 30,000 students every year.

In 1997, Tremaine closed his studio in North Hollywood. Teaching midweek and touring every weekend left too little time for overseeing his award-winning instructional videos, for long-range planning for his business, for study, choreography, reflection, or rest. Besides, now almost every small studio school and university dance program offers jazz dance instruction. Tremaine's current crop of jazz dance heirs include award-winning choreographer and dancer Barry Lather, dancer-singer Paula Abdul, teacher and designer Marcea Lane, and Hollywood's hottest choreographer, Marguerite Derricks.

Joe Tremaine has been one of the mainstays of the Jazz Dance World Congress since its founding in 1990, and is honored as a master teacher of the younger generation of jazz dance.