- Yes. - Okay.
(dramatic music)
- [Jay] Two dancers work on a new routine.
(tap shoes clicking)
Nothing unusual about that, except that this is in fact
a very old routine.
(tap shoes clicking)
They're recreating a dance that this man performed
nearly 80 years ago.
(tap shoes clicking)
His name is Charlie Grass.
He's 91.
- I can't tell jokes all the time.
- [Jay] And you may have heard of
his childhood dance partner Bob Fosse.
♪ Bye ♪
♪ bye ♪
♪ Mein leiber Herr ♪
Yes, that Bob Fosse.
(tap shoes tapping)
A talented dancer who went on to have a monumental impact
as a choreographer and director.
(upbeat music) (clapping)
From age 12 to 17,
Bob Fosse and Charlie Grass performed as the Riff Brothers.
They met at age seven at a North Side Chicago dance school.
The owner put the boys on stage together when they were 11.
Brother acts were all the rage.
(upbeat music)
The Berry Brothers,
The Step Brothers,
and especially the Nicholas Brothers.
- So guess what?
It was Bob and Charles Riff, brothers.
(upbeat jazz music)
We started making money when we were 12 in '39.
I mean, we'd like to practice together and work hard.
We'd go to the theaters and watch the same movie over
maybe two or three times, pick up ideas.
- This is the one where you said we could use our shoulder
a little more.
- [Jay] Jenai Cutcher and Heather Brown
initially learned the dance
from this 75 year old dance notation.
Jenai runs the Chicago Dance History Project.
That's how she got to know Charlie
and his old Riff Brothers notation.
- Because I'm a tap dancer,
I could understand what I was reading,
and so I asked Charlie, you know, can I learn this?
Can I teach it to myself from paper?
Would that be okay?
- [Jay] But notation only records the steps.
They needed Charlie for things like style
and upper body movement,
and Charlie had no trouble remembering those details.
- We did the act for about five years, you know,
the same steps and all that so it does stay with you.
- [Jay] One thing that makes recreating it more challenging
is that tap dance has changed in the last 80 years.
Jenai says that these days upper body movement
is not a big priority.
- We prioritize sound and energy
more so wherever your arms
go and however they need to go in order to make the sounds
you want to make, that's perfectly acceptable.
- Today's tap is more down to earth,
and the feet are the instruments where years ago
it was more style.
- [Jay] Charlie says it's the difference between
Bill Robinson or Fred Astaire
(tap shoes clicking)
and Gregory Hines.
The end of the Riff Brothers came
when Bob Fosse graduated from high school in 1945,
a semester ahead of Charlie Grass.
Bob was itching to leave Chicago,
and he encouraged Charlie to skip that last semester
and join him on the road.
Charlie says he has no regrets.
- [Charlie] It was a hard life,
a gypsy life living out of suitcases,
and that I was sort of a home guy,
family guy.
- [Jay] But Charlie Grass still had his own long
and busy dance career.
Ballet soloist, choreographer,
and especially as a beloved teacher.
(tap shoes clicking)
Charlie married, had six kids, and beginning in his forties,
when the dance work dried up,
he worked as a pipe fitter like his dad until he retired.
Bob Fosse died of a heart attack in 1987 at age 60.
- [Charlie] I guess Bob's waiting for me up there.
Finish the routine.
I personally think that the happiest part of his life
is with me.
Those 10 years from seven to 17 as teenagers
growing up together, but I'm proud of him,
and I was a little bit of the Riff Brothers went with him.