Lesson 4 - In the Night
Can't get to the noon hour lesson this week as I have some other commitments. So I went the night before to the evening lesson for a makeup. I like the hour and a half format. It's not quite so rushed, and you get a little more time to work on moves. And they have a few more moves than us nooners do.
Still I managed to stay with them more or less. They were doing this brush thing, that I had a heck of a time following: you brush the floor with with your toe, which makes a smacka kind of sound, then you do a quick step ball change. It's really quick and sounds great, kind of smacka smacketa, but I couldn't get my feet to follow me.
We got the last piece of the Shim-Sham Shimmy tonight, which incorporated this brush-step-ball-change. It's going to take some work. But it's really cool how it all comes together. Then she showed how all the moves we learned could be jazzed up by throwing in some body moves, basically exaggerating the body's movement in some of the weight transfers. It's not something we need to know in the Intro Tap class, but it sure makes a difference in how it looks.
Teach showed us a bit to Superstition by Stevie Wonder, without saying a word. She led us through it bit by bit, and we managed to get it figured out. That was kind of neat too.
The night classes are a lot larger, so when we did the vines, we ended up splitting into two groups. There were 16 of us, so four on one side of the room, four on the other side, and those did a cross over between each other. Meanwhile in the back of the room the other eight were doing half vines and a step in a circle kind of thing. Vines I could do, but the step in circle was evil, because I always hit with my weight on the wrong foot, and then I'd be totally off balance.
At the end, we took 15 minutes to watch some videos of a couple of kids who were on TV a lot, back when TV was new, in the early 50's. Amazing stuff. I could see some of the stuff we were doing, but they would do a lot of whole body movement with the steps, which made it much more dramatic, and added a lot of humor. They were also pretty athletic, in some of the later stuff, when they were grown. You could see where James Brown got his moves. Teach said a lot of Hip-Hop originated from what these two were doing as well. Really neat.
It was a fun night, and I even got comments on my shoes, cuz they look pretty cool, compared to everyone else's real tap shoes. The real thing has a flat finish, and a bare minimum of style. I bought mine at The Bay, just regular shoes with a glossy finish, and they stood out in the crowd.
Another thing is I have a slightly loose tap on one toe, and apparently that's a good thing, as it changes the sound of the tap. The tiny air space between the tap and the shoe gives it a much sharper sound, and I could sure hear the difference between the two toes.
Next week there are no classes because of the spring break, so I'll have more in two.
Still I managed to stay with them more or less. They were doing this brush thing, that I had a heck of a time following: you brush the floor with with your toe, which makes a smacka kind of sound, then you do a quick step ball change. It's really quick and sounds great, kind of smacka smacketa, but I couldn't get my feet to follow me.
We got the last piece of the Shim-Sham Shimmy tonight, which incorporated this brush-step-ball-change. It's going to take some work. But it's really cool how it all comes together. Then she showed how all the moves we learned could be jazzed up by throwing in some body moves, basically exaggerating the body's movement in some of the weight transfers. It's not something we need to know in the Intro Tap class, but it sure makes a difference in how it looks.
Teach showed us a bit to Superstition by Stevie Wonder, without saying a word. She led us through it bit by bit, and we managed to get it figured out. That was kind of neat too.
The night classes are a lot larger, so when we did the vines, we ended up splitting into two groups. There were 16 of us, so four on one side of the room, four on the other side, and those did a cross over between each other. Meanwhile in the back of the room the other eight were doing half vines and a step in a circle kind of thing. Vines I could do, but the step in circle was evil, because I always hit with my weight on the wrong foot, and then I'd be totally off balance.
At the end, we took 15 minutes to watch some videos of a couple of kids who were on TV a lot, back when TV was new, in the early 50's. Amazing stuff. I could see some of the stuff we were doing, but they would do a lot of whole body movement with the steps, which made it much more dramatic, and added a lot of humor. They were also pretty athletic, in some of the later stuff, when they were grown. You could see where James Brown got his moves. Teach said a lot of Hip-Hop originated from what these two were doing as well. Really neat.
It was a fun night, and I even got comments on my shoes, cuz they look pretty cool, compared to everyone else's real tap shoes. The real thing has a flat finish, and a bare minimum of style. I bought mine at The Bay, just regular shoes with a glossy finish, and they stood out in the crowd.
Another thing is I have a slightly loose tap on one toe, and apparently that's a good thing, as it changes the sound of the tap. The tiny air space between the tap and the shoe gives it a much sharper sound, and I could sure hear the difference between the two toes.
Next week there are no classes because of the spring break, so I'll have more in two.
posted by Kelly at
8:35 PM
1 Comments:
Tapping to Stevie Wonder... I wouldn't have imagined that. When I think of tap, I think of show tunes.
Cool...
Nony
By
Anonymous, at 4:32 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home