Mine are glued and screwed.

So glad to be in a parade with my tap sisters and tap brothers! We celebrated Highspire's Bicentennial today. And whereas Harrisburg has a St Pat's parade every year, how often does a town have a bicentennial? (Don't think too hard on that one.)
photo source: Vicki's Tap Pups, LLC on Facebook

• "Mine are glued and screwed." "Better be careful who you say that to!"
• "Oh, it's a Tortilla song!"
  Fireball!
  

photos mine:
Lassos!


Elbows! (Andrea's call for it was better)


When in doubt, hold your beltloops!

---

Gonna miss everyone! No goodbyes, just "see ya later"s!

Look, I'm taller than Becky!
photo source: M Rebecca Long


photo source: Janet Shatto Baderak

5-6-7-8 Tap Pups!

On voice-recognition software

Vicki gave us a new sequence in Boot Camp. 

Usually, I write things down shortly after class.  Better a dull pencil than the sharpest of minds.  This time I tried to make voice-recognition do it.  And yes, I'm the one who on those automated menus ends up going, "English... English... English" and hitting 0 until I get a person.

My phone heard:

Rock step shuffle ball change shuffletone pet toast am the last step slap them them to the right to the left the lab steps to laugh all change

My phone is definitely not beating the Turing test anytime soon.

Busby Berkley was nuts.

I am writing this on March 13, 2014.
The more I write, the more I realize I can't publish it until after the Spring Show, May 31, 2014.
But initial impressions are powerful, and I sure hope I'll be a lot more comfortable with this dance with 10 more weeks of practice on it!

---

"In the Round" means the whole audience can see you but you can't see any of the other dancers.
As of today, my already-high-level respect for all the awesome people who routinely choreograph and act and dance in the round at Toby's Dinner Theatre moved to stratospheric admiration-bordering-on-reverence because of a tiny dose of experiential knowledge.

At church we say "Circles are better than rows", with the implication that community is build in small groups and supplemented with corporate worship. But in those circles, we all face IN.

In the round is TOUGH! The dance is suddenly a whole new monster! It's harder than "OK, this time with backs to the mirror." It's even harder than the learning curve of "same thing, opposite foot". And line dancing, with the same feet and the same arms but facing a different wall, is looking much easier than it was yesterday.
Another hundred reps. Practice-practice-practice! Another hundred reps and I'll have this down cold. Unless, of course, it changes next week.

---

AFTER-SHOW addendum, June 1, 2014: 
The choreography changed.  Of course it changed.  And Call Me ended up entering via what I call the "Union Jack" ("Get in your X-es!"), but instead of dancing to each corner as it was once projected, we did shift back into lines.  But still, mad props to Toby and her actor-waiters!

Tapalicious! (show quotes)

Compilation started once we got into all-level rehearsals, continued thru full-cast rehearsals, up thru morning of and the show itself. Blog post published after the show.)

• Shake your heinie! ~LuAnne (about the opening number)
• Clumpier clumps. ~me
• Can anyone do the splits? ~Vicki
• I saw "orange hats" on the costume list and was ehh about it. But now that I see sequinned orange hats WITH LEDs, I have some serious hat envy. ~me
• Nowhere else I'd rather be than making some noise with my friends and my feet. ~Becky
• It blinks!  I have a blinky hat!  ~me
• It sparkles.  And there's a surprise.   You might need to buy your own hat.  ~me (email to my sequin junkie)
• One more mistake I won't make in the show.
• I'm not aiming for perfect, my goal is immediately getting back in.  I can recover in two beats!
• I just want to say that my baby tapped onstage for the first time.  I think you should be the finale.  ~Vicki
• You guys rocked it!  The men are going to steal the show!
• Ladies, I have done the unthinkable.  But now I can wear my black & whites.
• So what are we going to talk about, ladies?  World peace?  ...I'm a nurse, I can talk about poop for days.
• "There are no 4s."  "What?"
• I've figured out what the walkons are for - so I'm not worried about the dance - the dance is easy!
• "Shoulda brought some Windex."  "Things I didn't think of when I left the house this morning."
• Raise the roof... raise the roof!  Windshield washer... windshield washer! 
• "I like your hair!"  "You, too, may have it!"
• (overheard backstage) I texted my husband: "I'll be the one in red."
• Help!  Can you untie my shoes?  I'm in the NEXT NUMBER!
• (running down the hall) I'm onstage NOWWWWWWW!
• I guess sequins anonymous isn't very anonymous.  

Tap Pups on Daybreak (abc27)

source: Brian Riordan

Brett & James visit the Tap Pups Studio (transcript available here)
abc27 WHTM

Vicki & Brian visit the abc27 studio
abc27 WHTM

Broadway road trip?

"I went to see The Music Man again today," started Vicki.

Some unstated responses from the class include:

• I didn't know it was in town.
• Oh, that would explain why Brian's car is outside, you must have gone up to New York.
• Matthew Broderick. Enhhhhhh. He's no Robert Preston. (This was mine.)

"So now the second set of slap-heel-heels are back in," Vicki continued.

As it turns out, the music for TAPALICIOUS is coming together, Vicki spent the day with her sound guy, and there will not be 76 trombones at the Spring Show, nor 110 cornets right behind.

---

Come see us! The show is going to be amazing and super fun! Come prepared to clap and sing along, tap your toes, and thoroughly enjoy your evening of song! Maybe you'll even be so inspired you sign up to join us in summer session and beyond!

Clumps

After two-thirds the class did one thing and our third did something different:

Tappin' Tortilla: You told us to clump ourselves, so we clumped!

---

Also, "I was holding for the intro!" "We're running it without music -- the intro is "8-and!"

---

In the round is gonna be fun...

- .- .--. / -.. .- -. -.-. .

Tap Dance is "Morse code for the soul." ~former Tap Dog Anthony LoCascio

Fun fact: I was looking up the Morse code for the title, and it turns out that Broadway's Eleanor Powell actually encoded Morse into one of her dances, Ship Ahoy, for her character to pass a message to a secret agent (another character).

Also, humorist Mitch Hedberg says, "I would imagine that if you could understand Morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy."

"Now wait. There's timing here, Kathie Lee."

I wore my gold "One" hat around downtown recently. Got a lot of compliments on it. And yes, it's now my official #annasbirthdaywish yellow wearable, but leading up to Vicki's appearance on the Today Show, it was easy to reference the Tap Pups from the Harrisburg St Patrick's Day parade (last Sat) and to drop in to "watch us, or tape it, Thursday in the 10-11am hour!"


photo source: Vicki's Tap Pups

---

We had a great time in the parade, too. (It's been a busy week!)

photo source for all photos not otherwise attributed: Big Frog -- additional photos available on Snapfish (free login & password required)


photo source: Brian Riordan

A few quotables:

• Sneaker taps aren't very sneaky.
• We've got some competition this year, so be sexy! Straight lines! ~Vicki
  Evidently straight lines are sexy. :-)
• On the state of our educational systems, overheard by Big Frog:
  "Why do they have the Mexican flag?"
  Someone needs a good dose of Fun with Flags.
  
• Everyone needs a Brian.
  

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So... see you at the Zembo! The Spring Show is Saturday, May 31, 6pm! (It's in the round! Practice-practice-practice!)
image source: TapPups.com

Tap Pups masterclass with a Tap Dog!

Anthony LoCascio, 16 years a Tap Dog, gave three entirely different masterclasses to the Tap Pups today!
He gave us such gems as:

• Counting is critical.
• Every step in tap is preparation for the next step.
• It's not scary because of you, it's scary because it's scary.

Then he smiled, wished us "May your feet be with you," and turned on the music with a "Good luck" (and an implicit "You'll need it.").

Because he worked with a lot of counterpoint and canons, the same steps travelled across the room and back. There was a neat step where the accent was done, depending on your part, as 4x2, 1-2-2-3, or 3-3-1-1. I've sung canons since I was tiny, but doing them with my feet was new. Also new to me was dancing with my hands to walk through the steps. Additionally, a few things that Vicki has doubtless taught us, but that were phrased differently today were

• Dance with your lower body and keep your head level.
• Watch your lines (meaning body lines rather than lines of dancers)
• Keep your knees over your toes.
• Toes do treble, heels do bass.

photo source: Vicki's Tap Pups

Anthony's company is TapLife, and he posts to Youtube as just4tap
I commend to you his Blurred Lines (which song we'd used for a PopTap session earlier in the year). There also is a tutorial on the same -- thankfully he didn't run our masterclass at the same speed as he works with dance professionals!

Your feet sound like...

"Your feet sound like a machine gun!" ~Vicki

I could live on that for awhile. Yay for shuffle-jumps in the warmup!
OK, now back to work. There is a LOT to learn before the Spring Show. Big arms! And SMILE!
(Bonus, we have a real Tap Dog coming in to give masterclasses on Saturday.)
source: Keane Sense of Rhythm

Growing as a person

Vicki, to the class:

You've all improved so much over the last 12, 18 months. I'm so happy with how you've grown.

...Now do it again.
And make me happier.

Incredibly high expectations, or "I think you're just that good."

My dad is a groupie.
And when he latches on to a group, they're stuck with him, for good or ill. He is your most passionate unpaid PR guy.
I just need to learn how to communicate with him so I feel encouraged by his zealotry instead of crushed by overwhelming exectations. For example:

The Tap Pups: LIVE dvds finally came in from this past year's spring show. (The show was June 29, and dad's queries about when to expect the dvds started in July.) Vicki blessed us with the opportunity to share our first viewing together; often there's a bus trip or similar and we can see watch the previous year's show on the way up. This year, without having a road trip in the plans (for the week of Thanksgiving, no less), she rented Midtown Cinema and we got to see ourselves on the big screen. (Great new tradition! Sure hope we do that every year!)

Dad was beyond delighted to get his own copy of the DVD this year. My parents purchased one for themselves because 1) their oldest child, their only daughter, was in five dances plus the opening number, and 2) last year the whole borrowing-my-copy thing, which had worked in previous years, went sadly awry and there was much indignation about who had it when in its circuit thru MD, never mind that I-the-owner had it for a week before ceding it at Thanksgiving and getting it back at EOPS.

Dad's favorite dance of all time is Acapella. Which is, admittedly, fabulous and one of my favorites as well.
But his question to me about it was:

Did you memorize it?

By which he meant, "You could throw that down, right here, right now, couldn't you? Of course you could."
He knows I'm not in Advanced. It doesn't seem to matter.
My stupefied, dumbfounded, spluttery response was, "How? From seeing it?"
Dad, cool as a cucumber, pointed out that

"One" you knew even before you were at that level.

Somehow he missed, in all the conversations he and I had leading up to the show, that we worked our brains out for One. We worked our butts off for One. And those of us who learned it new for the 2013 show danced full-out but very much tucked away in the corner of the back row. And we still felt a HUGE sense of accomplishment just at that. For me it was an incredibly emotional experience.

Vicki, you have been warned. The bar is set very high. Evidently the Tap Pups are so good that people in the stands now think we learn by osmosis.

I better practice some more. That helicopter step in this year's piece...

I better practice some more.

Tap Pups - all-cast rehearsals and the show as seen from backstage

What, the show is over?
Now what?

As much as I feel like THIS the day of the show, all butterflies, nerves, adrenaline, and anticipation, afterwards I inevitably feel at loose ends.
But here are some moments and quotes and thoughts...

We'll get the official DVDs when they're ready... but they're always a work of art, so it will doubtless be months before they come out.  Props to Brian and his team also for the graphics work and videos that separated the dances -- interviews and dance clips of each of us.  It's a huge step up from my first show with Vicki, when we had a specific order (that year, by age) to come out between dances and pass the mic to say our name, age, and occupation. 


Quoteable moments:

• Do I throw coal over my near shoulder or my far shoulder?
• The whole shovel!
• Does he dance this way when he's dressed as a pistachio?  (about Psy)
• There's no music for this one?  Yes, acapella means no music.
• I dance by sound.  -Andrea, who helped us review One by dancing along and voicing dah-duh-duh-las instead of ball-change-steps
• Who dances up there?  -Franz, via FB about the scissor lift installing lights in the flies.

And my personal favorite:

• There are no mistakes, just unexpected solos.  -"Not dead yet" Mary

Tech is always fun. Always always always be nice to your techies. I wouldn't want their job! And with a husband and a dad who run sound at a church level, I have utmost respect for the crew. But here's a moment of SAT prep, Tap Pups style.

ONE
For me, this is THE dance.  And when opportunity arose to learn-slash-review it this past winter, a number of "new intermediates" (those that moved up this year or were new to the Tap Pups at Int), jumped at the chance. And then we were told that it was "just for fun", that it wouldn't be in the show, no pressure. And over the course of a month of Saturdays, extra classes, those that knew the dance had brushed it up, and those that were new to it had at least seen every part once. And then it was tabled because there's always so much else to do.

When we got to all-level rehearsals¹ we saw the first posting of tentative show order. And One was on the list.

¹Not full cast; by all-level I mean everyone at a given level. There are multiple B3 classes during a week, multiple Int classes, etc, and we need the all-level rehearsals to work out who dances where, etc.)

Some of us (read: I) hadn't practiced One since January.
But it's ONE.
Some chose to brush up on it from what they knew from last year and reviewed in January.
Some figured they hadn't locked it in from new in January and chose not to dance it in the show.
Some danced it last year but hadn't reviewed it enough to be confident in it.
But for three of us, the opportunity to dance in ONE was worth all the work.
It was glorious. And I don't mind telling you, I was emotional to the point of tears at the tail end of it during the show.

It's One.

Assorted 50s/60s Dances
It should be noted that at least EIGHT assorted dances were CUT from the choreography! Before that we were "requesting" that the video feed of which dance was next be projected to the rear of the auditorium, for our own memory's sake. The way Vicki put this dance together as performed was just fantastic -- and in the show we didn't use a "show shirt", we each put together an outfit, from cat's eye glasses to lettermen's jackets to a Harley jacket to poodle skirts and color, motion, and JOY! Daniel (our photographer this week, but who also has given us Broadway masterclasses) says that the only reason for dance is joy.

Anticipation... "You should be here!"

And finally, Brian taped a bit of the show opening, Wings... you can never bring back the experience, just some of the data from it... but this tiny clip of an all-consuming day was enough to tear me up again.
Official Wings video http://tinyurl.com/TapPupsLiveOpen

EDIT: Some video clips removed from blog post.

Happy National Tap Dance Day!

source: Capezio

May 25 is National Tap Dance Day, the date selected because it's the birthday of Bojangles. (I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you/in worn out shoes) According to Wiki, some celebrate it by doing the Shim Sham Shimmy (shuffle step, shuffle step, shuffle ball-change, shuffle step, etc) in the streets. Evidently flash mobs are not as new a phenomena as some might think.

Growing up, I always wanted to tap. When different organizations sent home lists of available dance classes, I always looked for tap. I never took up dance, of any kind, until joining Vicki's Tap Pups in 2008, but I always knew that that was the genre that had my heart.
Some of my favorite tappers, in no particular order, include:

Gregory Hines, here performing for and with Sammy Davis Jr

(My favorite Gregory Hines clip is in Will & Grace, when Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) challenges him to a tap-off, but I couldn't find that bit on YouTube. If you find it, please, send it my way.)

Gene Kelly, who even wears taps in a field of heather on a hill in a town that doesn't exist.
Here he is with Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor. Debbie Reynolds once said that she was a novice hoofer when she got on set with these guys, but she sure doesn't show it!

Also, Gene Kelly in Ballin' the Jack, followed by a chair medley with Donald O'Connor


Vera Ellen in White Christmas


Ann Miller (it should be noted that Kiss Me, Kate was originally filmed in 3D, which is why she randomly throws things at the camera)


Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (doing everything Astaire did, backwards and in heels)


Arthur Duncan on the Lawrence Welk Show


Savion Glover


Tap Dogs, in whose honor the Tap Pups were named


and of course the Rockettes.

(also, here is a Wall Street Journal behind the scenes bit on the Rockettes)

I leave you with the Tap-off from Gregory Hines' 1980 movie, Tap. It features "old hoofers" Jimmy Slyde, Harold Nicholas, Steve Condos, Sammy Davis Jr., Sandman Simms, Bunny Briggs, and Arthur Duncan, schooling Gregory Hines. (The boy in the baseball cap, who doesn't tap in this scene is the actual Tap Dance Kid, Savion Glover.)


Mr Bojangles.
Mr Bojangles?
Dance.

Tap Mom

My Tap Mom got married today.

No, not Vicki. (This is how rumors get started!)

AnnieK joined Tap Pups the same year I did, the year Vicki opened the studio¹. We met through Tap Pups, but one thing I love about the group is how you get to know so many awesome people from so many different backgrounds and experiences. It really is a community. We support each other in learning the dances and in life, through family issues, medical issues, and our various activities outside of tap. We shoe shop together² and go for meals together after class³.

¹ Previous to that, Vicki figured she had all the tappers and wannabe tappers in Central PA, all 50 of them. Then Everyone-needs-a-Brian got involved in the marketing and the Tap Pups took off. The year the studio opened, we had nearly 100 Beginner 1s⁴ and nearly 200 total tappers in four levels in the Spring Show. Now there are probably 500 Tap Pups. For more of the story, I highly recommend Vicki's memoir, Encore Performance, available in hardback and Kindle versions. There are also videos coded in that you can use your smartphone to get to Youtube clips.
² Becca and Lisa, I'm looking at you!
³ Betsy, Sabina, where should we go next? And when are you going to help me with the end of One, Marcia and Betsy?
⁴ Should that be Beginner 1's or Beginner 1s? Grammar Nazis, English Majors, help me out!

Anyways, AnnieK and I were in Beginner 1 together, dancing Stagger Lee⁵ and New York, New York with my Tap sisters⁶ and about 100 other B1s (B1's?⁴). We also plugged into Vicki's road trips, including a memorable (if wet) visit to Philly to dance on the Rocky steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an international group of legislators. (How did we get hooked up with that? The organizer is a Tap Pup, of course.)

⁵ Now the B1s dance to Greased Lightning. I'm still working on how to get Vicki's choreography incorporated in my terping for Grease at CVHS. It's a work in progress.
⁶ Miss you, Elena and Jenni! Come back! D





Personally, I aspire to be an All-Star. But I've got a long ways to go for that.


Over the years, we've 1) inadvertently clubbed people with baseball bats 2) messed up Annie's hardwood floors with our taps 3) paraded around Harrisburg in day-glo green 3a) and even been followed by the mullet people

And today I was honored to join with Annie's and Terry's family-you-build for a celebration of two great countries coming together.


Congrats, you crazy kids. May you have many years of fun together.

One.

See how much I love you, Optimista?

This is why I want to be an All-Star. 
Vicki, and not a few others, say they enjoy listening to me emote over watching this piece.  I get really into it.  You have been warned. 

How cool is it that I get to LEARN it now?