PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 61
OBITUARY
ONE MAN, MANY VOICES A TRIBUTE TO TOBIAS TAK
BY JREENA GREEN
The British jazz dance community recently lost one of its leading lights. Award-winning rhythm tap dancer and choreographer tobias Eduard Tak, who died on 7 January 2020, had a profound impact on the lives and careers of many dancers in the UK and worldwide. Tobias Tak was born in Voorburg in the Netherlands on 25 January 1954, into a refugee family who had fled the Holocaust. Tobias studied fine art at the Royal Academy (The Hague), where he pursued his passion for drawing. In later life he became a well-known comic book illustrator and published many books. Through his weekly classes at London’s Danceworks and solo rhythm tap shows which toured throughout Britain and Europe, Tobias changed the face of British tap dancing. He furthered his studies studying in New York under tap legends such as Honi Coles and Charles Cook and shared this knowledge with his British students. Some would say he, more than any other one individual, taught British tap dancers to ‘swing’.
Tobias Tak, photo courtesy Tobias Tak colleagues
In the early 1980s, jazz dance went through a revival in Europe. At the forefront of this resurgence were UK dance companies such as the Zoots and Spangles, I Dance Jazz (IDJ), Brothers in Jazz, Jazzcotech, Jiving Lindy Hoppers and individuals like Dollie Henry, Jreena Green, Stuart Arnold and Paul Henry. Tobias was an inspiration for many of these practitioners and also passed on his passion to a younger generation of rhythm tappers (‘hoofers’), such as Junior Laniyan, Lee Payne, Annette Walker and Scott Cripps.