Another Go at Tap-Dancing

            The other weekend I was able to have another go at tap-dancing at the more basic level I needed.  I’d attended classes sporadically, but I was the only complete beginner and therefore never had the chance to focus on acquiring basic technique.  Norfolk Dance to the rescue again!  This far-sighted organisation had arranged a Saturday morning tap taster session with a local teacher, while it mulled over whether it had enough resources to put on a regular course.

            Although the teacher was 20 minutes late, having apparently mistaken the time of the class, we were in fact taught quite a lot of steps.  He started with a presentation about himself and about the history of tap, and then we concentrated on learning steps and putting them into a routine.  Everyone kept up – most were beginners (we were meant to be beginners), but one friend of mine was advanced enough to have already danced on the stage of the Theatre Royal and was only there out of keenness!  I was the only one to be wearing shorts, which is what I’d noticed chorus girls wearing in films about tap-dancing.   (There’s a photo of me in shorts jumping at a ballet class on my Sagazone blog www.sagazone.co.uk/blogs/detail/23961/).   (Although you'd need to register to be able to read more than my first post on it).

            As the teacher said, we probably wouldn’t have thought we’d put together as long a sequence as we did, and it was enjoyable and satisfying, and we were given a list of steps to go away and study.  The ever-alert Director of Norfolk Dance dropped in from time to time to observe, and thought the level was about right.  It would be lovely if they managed to put on more classes, especially as I hear one or two tap classes have folded in Norwich.       

            By coincidence there was a most entertaining play about tap-dancing at the Theatre Royal in Norwich in the same week, which we went to see – Richard Harris’s Stepping Out.  We’d already been amused by it when the Maddermarket Theatre put it on a few years ago, and I wanted to see it again since learning to tap-dance myself.  It’s about the ups and downs of an amateur troupe of tap-dancers preparing for a show – people of very mixed backgrounds, including a lone male.  It’s a funny play with lots of tensions and mishaps.  I recognised the sort of tap routines they did from classes I’ve been to, though I’d like to think my companions were more adept than these characters were!  But the dramatist kindly allows them to perform very well at the end of the play, so that the actors can show that they really can do it!  The audience were delighted.

            It’s all a very pleasing way of extending one’s dancing experience.