Maybe you can tap out a rhythm, but how much do you really know about tap dance?

By Rain Francis.

1. Which of the following steps would you associate least with tap dance?

a) shuffle

b) cramp roll

c) layout

d) wings

2. Which of the following musicals would you find the most tap dancing in?

a) 42^nd Street

b) A Chorus Line

c) Oklahoma!

d) Hair

3. True or false: Mr Bojangles is a fictional character.

4. With which style of tap dance would you most associate Michael Flatley?

a) Irish tap dancing

b) Soft shoe

c) Broadway tap

d) All of the above

5. Which of the following is not a character from Anything Goes?

a) Billy Crocker

b) Reno Sweeney

c) Moonface Martin

d) Billy Flynn

6. What is the name for a tap dancer who dances very close to the floor, using mostly footwork and little upper body movement?

a) flapper

b) shuffler

c) stepper

d) hoofer

7. The USA celebrates National Tap Dance Day on May 25. In what year was this signed into law?

a) 1909

b) 1949

c) 1989

d) 2009

8. Mumble, Gloria, Memphis and Norma Jean are all characters from which tapping movie?

a) Step Up

b) Happy Feet

c) Singing in the Rain

d) Tap

9. Which famous tapper is not an actor in the 1989 film Tap?

a) Savion Glover

b) Gregory Hines

c) Sammy Davis, Jnr

d) Fred Astaire

10. In the film Anchors Aweigh, Gene Kelly famously performs a tap dance number with which cartoon character?

a) Mickey Mouse

b) Jerry Mouse

c) Bambi

d) Jessica Rabbit

ANSWERS:
1 – c; 2 – a; 3 – false; 4 – a; 5 – d; 6 – d; 7 – c; 8 – b; 9 – d; 10 – b

Photo: Melinda Sullivan and dancers perform the winning routine at this year’s Capezio ACE Awards at Dance Teacher Summit New York.
Photo courtesy of Break The Floor Productions

By Winston Morrison

Renowned tap fanatic Chloe Arnold is a co-director of the LA Tap Festival and DC Tap Festival.  She makes a living from tap dancing professionally all around the world.

In a half hour interview, walking and cabbing through New York City, I asked Chloe about the defining moments of her dance life, advice for aspiring tap dancers, and what goes on in her brilliant tap mind. Follow Chloe’s advice and you will get results.  Besides her skill, it is the person that Chloe is that has made her a success. Tap dancers who want a career in tap can model Chloe’s mindset, priorities and lifestyle to help them become a professional doing what they love.

Tell us about your training and experiences.

When I was 6, I started dancing in this regular dancing school doing jazz, ballet and tap. There was this one particular tap duo that my friend and I really worked on to make better. That’s my first recollection of making a stronger commitment to tap.

One day my mom saw an audition for an all-tap company. I made it on probation; contingent upon the idea that if I improved within three months then I could be in the company.  The teacher in that company sought out information from the masters and hoofers and brought in master classes with Lavaughn Robinson, Eddie Brown, Buster Brown and Harriet Brown. He exposed us to a lot of people.

Savion Glover came to D.C. and did a one month residency  – Savion Glover’s DC Crew.  I auditioned for that and got in. I was 10, and that really changed my life because we were having professional experience with him training four hours a day, learning choreography and then performing it in a large scale show.

One of the years he brought us to New York for a Broadway Showcase.  That changed my life again because I decided I had to move to New York. So at 11 years old I decided I was moving to New York when I grew up and that I was going to be a tap dancer.  I trained really hard and surrounded myself with people that inspired me, really pushed me to get better and didn’t baby me, but demanded excellence.

What other training do you do to support your tap?

I jam about 5 times a week, run and lift.

When dancing professionally how important is business?

Business, although it doesn’t help your tap dancing skills, is how you’re going to help your tap dancing career.  You’re not going to have a career if you don’t do business. Business is how you expand, and do what you want to do.

As tap dancers how can we find insipration?

Watching footage is a wonderful way to get inspired and also watching other kinds of art. Dance is movement, and watching other ways that people move makes me a better mover.   Go out and listen to music, any kind of music.  Jason Samuels Smith is a fabulous DJ and provides me with a lot of great music.  Stretch.  Write down ideas, and stories.  Sing. 

How do you keep your mental strength?

The time I auditioned for Savion’s DC Crew someone told me I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t good enough yet. But my mom was like, ‘just try, you always try’. So I tried. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessarily that I was good enough or not, it was just that he saw something in me. I don’t know what he saw, but something! 

When I came to New York and I first danced in a jam session that was my lowest point.  I flunked – embarrassment, humiliation. I told myself to go home and practise.  I just kept saying to myself  ‘you can’t be afraid because if you’re afraid, you’ll give up and you’ll never get this’.

What’s your vision for tap?

I just want to see more tap.  I want to see it on TV, in film, in music as music, on Broadway and on tours in a way that celebrates the art, the music, and the diversity of it.

What’s important to Chloe in her life and career now? 

CHLOE ARNOLD’S TOP 5 LIFE VALUES

1) Love.  Love for tap and love for life.  Love is what gets me out of bed and to work for 14 hours.  I love walking down the streets of New York feeling alive and excited. I’m driven by love.

2) Friends and family are very overlapped in my life and they come under love.  I value my friends like family. I’d do just about anything for my family, and we work as a team.

3) Respect.  I have a great deal of respect for myself, for other people, for my work and other people’s work.  That allows for an environment of peace, as opposed to war where you don’t have respect for other cultures, ways and views. Treat other people the way you want to be treated, that’s real. 

4) Fun falls under the love factor because everything I’m talking about is just fun to me too.

5)  Culture.  For example, today I came across a kid from Tokyo who didn’t speak English, and the idea that I can try to speak his language and try to connect is invigorating to me.  I get excited by differences. 

CHLOE ARNOLD’S TOP 5 CAREER VALUES

1)  Respect yourself, your art and that of others.  If you become a star who only respects your own work and not others, you’re going to find yourself on an island (isolated).   The great thing about art is it’s communication, and you’re able to connect with others.

2)  Work ethic and discipline.  Discipline yourself, like do I really want this salad right now? Maybe not, maybe I’d love a cookie but after working six hours this is how I replenish.  It’s about having the discipline to do that or putting on my shoes for the 4^th hour when I’m tired and don’t want to.  Everything you do in life requires sacrifice, anything you really want in this life will not come without sacrifice.

3)  Perseverance.  No matter how hard you get knocked down, you just stand back up. No matter how mean someone is to you, no matter how someone makes you feel like you should quit…NEVER give up.  And all this should be driven by your:

4)  Love and passion. That should really be the root of it – you’re only doing this art because there’s a passion for it.

5)  Be yourself as an artist.  You have to at some point.  The more you are yourself, the more unique you become because there’s no one like you, and the more effective your art will be.  You are relaying your art, not just imitating.

By Nicole Saleh.

To all the tap dancers who’ve wanted the rhythmic precision and brilliant feet of Jason Samuels Smith, you’re now one step closer!

In a highly innovative collaboration, Bloch, who are experts in technical dance footwear, have partnered with Jason Samuels Smith, one of the world’s greatest tap dancers, to create a professional tap shoe to meet the needs of today’s tap dancer.

It’s taken over four years to perfect, countless hours of research and testing to develop the Jason Samuels Smith Professional Tap Shoe SO313. This beautifully crafted tap shoe is not only comfortable and stylish, it also produces an amazing sound like a well tuned instrument… but don’t take my word for it. You can now try it out for yourself!

On his recent trip to Australia, Jason officially launched the SO313 at Bloch’s flagship store in Sydney. I caught up with him during his whirlwind visit to learn more about this uniquely crafted tap shoe.

As a Tap Dancer, how important is it to have good tap shoes?
The tap shoe is your instrument and it’s an extension of your foot, so it’s very important that it’s made well and has a decent sound that you prefer. It needs to be comfortable enough to wear for a long period of time and stylish enough to be presentable on stage. Tap dancers deserve a good shoe to accompany the art form. Tap dancing is too amazing not to have an instrument that can deliver.

How did your relationship start with Bloch?
Some Bloch representatives approached me four or five years ago at a national tap dance event. They had been keeping track of me and were very aware of my career, and were interested in developing a professional tap dance shoe. I knew I wanted to create a shoe but I didn’t know how I was going to do it, so when Bloch approached me it was perfect timing. They were really open to the idea of allowing me to have full creative say over the design of the shoe, and were willing to make whatever changes I asked.

Jason Samuels Smith shows off the tap shoe at Bloch York Street, Sydney

How involved were you with the design of the tap shoes?
I was completely involved. In the beginning Bloch sent me a model of their top professional tap shoe that looked more like a steel-toe boot than a dress shoe. I gave them a shoe that I liked in a classic Hollywood 30’s or 40’s style and once they had the core design we kept altering it.

I had seen a clip of Coles (Honey Coles) and Atkins (Cholly Atkins) tap dancing and they’re wearing shoes that have a straight cut across the toe and the toe is in a different colour to the back of the shoe. I always liked how this looked and so we have done two versions of the stitching for our shoe. One has the hard cut that goes across the toe – that’s the ladies version. The other one cuts across and has a sharper cut that goes to the back. So there is slightly different stitching on the shoes, which gives more options in terms of customisation.

So you have a female version and a male version of the shoe?
Right now we have a basic design for a male and a female shoe, where the sole, the leather and interior are all the same. The female shoe has slightly different stitching but it’s not necessarily gender restrictive. I know guys that have bought the female shoe because it’s a narrower cut of the male shoe. My foot is naturally wide and Bloch designed the shoe based on my foot, so the male shoe that comes out of the box is wide.

What was the most important thing for you working on this project?
The main thing was to create a professional high quality tap shoe as a complete package which to me means a shoe that is a total entity and lasts the distance. We worked on the durability of the shoe and the style, and it was also important that the shoes have their own distinctive sound.

The shoe also needs to be comfortable. If you’re teaching three or four classes a day, your feet are just throbbing by the end of the day. Bloch really attacked this, even before I approached it. Their shoes are some of the most comfortable dance shoes in the world, so I was really happy about that.

Sound is an important aspect of tap. What process did you undergo to ensure the shoes produced an exceptional quality sound?
At the beginning of the whole process Bloch did a focus group. They called in a bunch of tap dancers: Derrick Grant, Michelle Dorrance, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Chloe Arnold, Dianne Walker, and myself. They had taps from the past and the present and we tested the sound independent of the shoe, and also on the shoe, and every dancer would say which tone they preferred. I was really feeling confident with the shoe and we were at the end of the process when Bloch wanted me to try these new bigger taps that covered the entire surface of your toe to the ball of your foot. The sound was really unique and the tone produced by the bigger tap was so rich, deep and base heavy that I loved it immediately! The sound I can produce with the taps is actually my favourite part of the shoe.

Jason Samuels Smith signs autographs at Bloch York Street, Sydney

Are the shoes designed only for professional dancers? What are some of its unique features?
It’s a comfortable shoe that any level tap dancer can use. If you’re buying a tap shoe it should come as a tap shoe with taps on it already. With our shoe it’s ready to use straight out of the box, and it doesn’t have a long break in time. It also comes with optional pieces of rubber for the sole of the shoe. I don’t particularly like the rubber because it limits your ability to slide, so we have given this as an option.

The shoe comes with a build up (additional half soles on the toe and heel), which changes the tone giving it a deeper base and helps to balance the bottom of the sole. The build up also gives a richer sound and more versatility, so if you want to use the top edge of the toe, you have more surface area to create that sound or to do a toe stand.

My mission was to develop an instrument that can withstand the force that we use to create our sound. When we’re tap dancing we’re destroying our shoes and tearing them to shreds. My goal was to create a long lasting shoe. We’ve really tried to reinforce the stitching over and over again so people will get the most life out of it. It won’t obviously last forever but I believe in business, if you do the job right the first time, people are going to come back the second time. I also think the shoe will make a lot of tap dancers happy because it’s made for tap dancers by a tap dancer. 

What is your hope for the Jason Samuels Smith Professional Tap Shoe?
One of my dreams for the shoe is for every tap dancer on the planet to try them once, and hopefully they will like them and continue to support them. Personally I want to continue to make the shoe better like we have done over the last four years. I want people to give me feedback because it’s not about what I want, but about what we (the tap community) want.

To get your pair of Jason Samuels Smith’s Tap Shoes SO313, contact your nearest Bloch retailer by visiting www.blochworld.com

Jason Samuels Smith’s tips on buying Tap Shoes
1. What are you are trying to accomplish in your tap shoes?
Are you buying them to perform, teach, practice, or because they look nice?
If you’re a teacher and you teach sixteen classes a week you need something that is comfortable and immediately feels good. You should never have pain when you start wearing a pair of shoes and you don’t want to have to break them in. If you can feel your toe at the tip of the shoe and it’s uncomfortable, then it doesn’t fit and you need another size. It’s got to be comfortable!
2. It has to produce a sound you like, so you need to test it out on a wood surface to get a feel for the sound.
3. It needs to look good. But it doesn’t matter how it looks, if it doesn’t sound or feel great.

Top photo by Michael Higgins

Spring Dance 2010 

Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Australia
Sept 2^nd 2010

By Nicole Saleh 

Savion Glover does not lie. He promised bare  sounds, and that is exactly what he delivered at the 2010 Spring Dance Festival at the Sydney Opera House.

Bare Soundz is 90 minutes of pure tap: no narrative, no props, no fancy sets. On stage there are simply three wooden platforms amplifying the beats of Glover, Maurice Chestnut and Marshall Davis Jnr. Reminiscent of a traditional jazz trio (bass, drum and keys), Chestnut and Davis start Bare Soundz by creating a consistent strong backbeat with their heel and toe taps, simply tapping with one foot to provide the strong bass. Glover takes centre stage, and with clearly articulated footwork he delivers a smooth melody, punctuated at times with strong staccato beats. When it comes to his performance it is evident that Glover’s rhythms permeate from within. At times he was clearly focused and performing in his zone, with eyes closed and a smile on his face that expressed sheer joy in the music he was creating with his feet. He captivated the audience to not only see the visual element of dance but to intently listen to the dance and be transported by the musicality of his rhythms.

Savion Glover’s rhythmical journey started when he was a young musician playing the drums. Growing up in a musically gifted family, Glover applied his skills to tap dancing. He is the talent behind the animated tap dancing penguin Mumble, in the film Happy Feet and is widely recognised today as the world’s greatest tap dancer. Privileged to have learnt his craft from revered tap legends such as Lon Chaney, Jimmy Slide, Chuck Green, Honi Coles, Bunny Briggs and Gregory Hines, Glover carries on today the legacy of these pioneering hoofers through his own works that push the boundaries of tap dance. 

What makes Glover’s show extraordinary is that it is never performed the exact same way twice. Glover calls this, Improvography; a combination of choreography and improvisation. When all three dancers are tapping in unison the timing is impeccable, as if you are hearing one tap dancer. When each dancer in turn takes the lead, they show their own unique style through improvisation. Chestnut has a distinct groove where he performs with strength and conviction in his solo, while Davis is reminiscent of the legendary hoofers tapping with speed and control, letting his feet do the talking. Glover is a brilliant technician who wowed the audience with his power and fast footwork, delivering clear intricate beats that are performed effortlessly. Wearing traditional Capezio black tap boots, and not his usual trademark green, he made sounds using every part of his boot from the inner and outer edge, to the soles, heels and toes. His boots are his musical instrument and there was not one part of his boot that he did not use to create a soulful tune.

A highlight for me was the jam session, when each dancer in succession took 16 counts to improvise and outdo the performance of the dancer before them. Trying to impress, Glover, Chestnut and Davis pulled out all stops with complex wings, riffs, shuffles, toe stands, slides and turns while never missing a beat. It brought out their competitive side as they stole each other’s steps and did it one better than the last dancer, which had the audience amazed.

Feeling inspired by the show, I had the opportunity of honing my own tap skills at an exclusive Tap Master Class with Glover, and this is when it became really interesting!

Glover didn’t position himself at the front of the class and lead a traditional warm up, nor did he teach a combination as we had expected. He opened the class by explaining that he no longer taught ‘steps’ as we all have a vocabulary of steps. He challenged our thinking and approach to tap dance, which became the premise of the 2 hour workshop. Glover walked around the class weaving in and around the dancers as he posed philosophical questions in relation to tap. He explored the theory, technique and musicality of tap dance, discussing timing, accents and the structure of steps, all of which are important technique tools for improvisation. His class was a journey beyond the realm of a combination. It was unlike any tap class I‘d ever been to, and I was left to consider whether we approach tap as musicians, dancers or both. What I enjoyed most was when Glover demonstrated musical concepts such as half time, single time and double time, and taught us how to create our own combination using the structure of “3 and a break”.

Everything I learnt from the class became more apparent when seeing Bare Soundz for the second time. It is extremely rare for me to see a show twice in one week, but I could not help going back for more to experience the brilliance of Savion Glover – 90 minutes of nothing but tap dancing and wonderful rhythmic sounds at its best.

A true creative genius, Savion Glover is an artist dedicated to his craft. He not only delivered an incredible performance to Sydney audiences, but has also embraced the responsibility of carrying forward his art form, sharing the musicality of tap dance to the next generation of dancers and reminding me of what the Bare Soundz of tap dance is all about….creating music with your feet!

Hear from George Miller, Director of Happy Feet, on Savion Glover
Click here

Photos: James Morgan

Published by www.danceinforma.com

By Deborah Searle

At the recent New York City Dance Alliance I was honored to take part in the teacher classes and discussions. The insights shared, work taught, and exercises given were very valuable. So valuable in fact, that I thought I might share them with you….

Here are some helpful hints from Tap legend Chloe Arnold. Chloe, an icon in tap, has an impressive list of stage and screen credits. Beyonce’s dance double for her Upgrade You film clip, Chloe has recently  featured in the new hit show Imagine Tap, Outkast’s movie Idlewild, and Sean Paul’s music video for the movie Step Up. Currently co-director of the Los Angeles Tap Festival and DC Tap Festival, Chloe has directed short films and independent music videos, and has produced over 20 shows.

Chloe shared many helpful and creative ideas. These are my notes below:

Be creative.
Tap is evolutionary, that’s what’s so fantastic about Tap.  Don’t be afraid to develop new steps and combinations and encourage your students to do so.

Challenge the Syllabus
See how you can be creative with a syllabus to challenge your students. If an exercise has heel toe, heel toe, try doing it toe heel, toe heel. Reverse how you do the step with your feet. Try this with more complex steps and be creative with it. Choreograph warms up with steps from the syllabus backwards, to help the students to think and to reverse steps. Where an exercise would normally have a step heel toe, put in a step stamp heel, and so on. Challenge your students with rhythms.

Expose your students to the many styles of Tap
There are so many different forms of tap dance now. Why can’t you mix up all the different styles and embrace them in your classes? All the varieties of Tap that have evolved are valid and your students should be exposed to them, as they could audition for a production and be a fabulous tapper, but struggle if the style they are given is foreign to them.

Educate your students on the History of Tap Dance
Be passionate about the history of Tap and tell your students about it. Tap in the jazz era was what hip hop and street dance is today. It was breaking the boundaries and was the street dance of past eras. Tap is creative. It’s not something that birthed out of the studios. It’s edgy and students need to realise the history of the dance form to really embrace what tap is about.