Hey, twickster, how did you learn how to tap dance? You sure make it sound like a lot of fun.
Well, not all of the younger set. My middle daughter, now 13, took up dance classes when she was 11, so this is her third year. Her first year, they did a jazz number and a tap to “Cotton Eyed Joe”. Second year, a jazz and a ballet, and all the girls seemed disappointed that there was no tap. This year they’re back to a jazz and a tap to “Hey Ya”. My daughter is amazed, every week, at the coolness of tap dancing!
“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing, as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it immensely. All art is useless.”
- Ocsar Wilde
I personally admire dance immensely.
Incredibly fun, it really is! I take lessons at a local dance school, where they do have separate classes for adults – I just take the regular advanced tap class, though, even though I’m 30 years older than everyone else in there. They make allowances for the fact that I don’t remember stuff as well as they do – OTOH, if the teacher just runs through the bit we learned last week once (okay, maybe twice), I’m good to proceed – I don’t need to completely relearn it.
Anyone who’s thinking – damn, that looks like fun – seriously, give it a try. The first year or so when you’re learning the basics, it really doesn’t matter much who your teacher is – anyone can teach you a time step. If you get more into it, it’s more fun if you have a good teacher – mine is primarily a tap-dancer (performs with a local troupe) and also a choreographer, so she’s always coming up with fun new stuff to do.
Go for it!
Tap is out of favor? Two words: Savion Glover.
I saw Savion the same day that Tupac was killed. That’s the difference between tap and rap.
Well, to defend the OP, tap dancing as an entertainment medium does have its limitations. It doesn’t have the grade and flow that other dance forms do where the dancer isn’t using his or her feet as percussion instruments, and taps apre pretty limited as percussion instruments – the worst of both worlds.
I can easily see how tap dancing could be fun to PERFORM, I just think as an entertainment venue the form is, well, limited compared to most other forms of dance, and compared to most other percussion instruments (save perhaps for that very silly percussion instrument, the triangle). The worst of both worlds.
I see that my post was redundant and repeated itself. I plead early Saturday morning. The Smurfs on TV were distracting me, yeah, that’s right, the Smurfs did it, blame them … mumble, mumble …
I took tap lessons for 11 years. I loved every second of it. It was a way to make exercising fun and meet new people. I miss tap so much that I enrolled for a class next semester. I’m hoping it won’t be too easy, heh. Jeez, I miss tap.
I want to learn to do the Castle Walk, the Maxixe, the Two-Step . . . But even in NYC, try and get someone to teach you the WWI-era dances!
Check out Aussie tap legends Dein Perry’s Tap Dogs who do their stuff in work boots. There was an ordinary Aussie movie based on their story called “Bootmen”.
Perry got his troupe together in working class steel town Newcastle but they were so cool that they didn’t have to suffer being mocked.
Oh and if you want to find out about hard work spend a minute or two doing a time step at 120 beats a minute.
I can name four professional tap companies off the top of my head. Tap Dogs, Manhatten Tap, National Tap Ensemble, and Stomp (which is a bit more complicated than that, but I’ll throw them in anyway because it is essentially time step.)
And FTR - the jazz style dancing used on Broadway is for the most part VERY closely related to tap. That’s why they often call it “jazz-tap” and you usually learn them together.