This is me.

So my entry point to it was Ginger Rogers.

But really, this is my legacy.

This art form is my legacy.

From Futuro Media and PRX, it's Latino USA. I'm Maria Innojosa.

Today, Ayodele Casel, the decorated Afro-Latina tap dancer, and how her art is part of her legacy.

For Ayodele Cassell, tap dancing is not just a series of steps.

It's magic. It's when she feels the most free and is able to connect to her cultural heritage.

The Bronx native was born to a Puerto Rican mother and a black father.

She discovered Tapp through the silver screen at a young age, transfixed by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, so much so that she started recreating their moves in her Bronx bedroom. But it wasn't

until she was a sophomore at the NYU Tish School of the Arts

that she took her first tap dancing class, and she's been dancing ever since. During her almost

three-decade-long career, Ayodale has received a number of accolades and awards, despite the field being dominated by male dancers.

Ayodele was the first woman to be invited to dance for Savian Glover's Not Your Ordinary Tap Dancers' group,

and she's performed in places like the White House, Radio City Music Hall, and Carnegie Hall.

In 2019, she was featured in a series of

Forever Stamps from the U.S. Post Office, the Black Heritage Stamp Series. A documentary about

Ayodere's development as an artist titled Tapping Into Our Past, Tapping Into Our Future, premiered in

2022. In that same year, Ayoledera's tap

choreography in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl earned her a drama desk nomination. Her work

calls attention to how tap dancing is an expression of identity, culture, language, and communication,

but also to the forgotten history of black tap dancers.

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