Been a While
Don't know why I haven't been able to keep this one up to date. It's been over a month since I've updated it.
I missed last week due to other committments, and we had guest instructor. She actually teaches the intro class that's there after us, and came a little early tonight. She lead everyone through a routine they came up with last weekend to a bouncy version of Pennies From Heaven. And in the middle was about 16 bars of pure improvisation. I was almost able to follow it up to that point. That was a lot of fun.
We ran through the time step again, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I feel clompy and awkward, but I'm making the right moves and sounds, mostly. There's a single, double and triple time step, and I actually find the triple easier than the double, although at speed I think I end up doing a single. The difference is that the triple is a shuffle-step, where the double is a phalap, and I find phalaps harder than shuffles. Again, at speed, these things just become a step. It'll come.
What I struggle with is the break. It's not hard, but it has to be jumped into pronto and I seem to be off balance most of the time going into it. Then it jumps back into the time step. It's kind of cool when it works - single time step, break, double time step, break, triple time step, break.
Then there was the traveling time step. I managed to pick that up pretty well after a couple of repetitions, but by now of course, I've totally forgotten it. The break for it was hard to get, and I think it was because it was mostly a rigid beat. The steps in it we've done lots, but with the beat, it slowed some stuff down, so that it was almost a balance issue. (Well, just about everything in tap is a balance issue for me.)
We did the C-Jam Blues thing, a few times all the way through, just to keep it in our heads. We didn't get to the stroll this time, though.
One interesting thing Tanis showed us was a couple of what she called trick steps. One was where we'd jump up and back, and while we do that we smack our toes against the floor as we were rising (theoretically, that is) then land on our toes and drop our heels right away.
The other was wings. Again jumping up, then with both feet at the same time, doing a sideways shuffle and landing on the toes and dropping the heels. It was impossible to do either of these, even with the bar.
Lots of other stuff we got to, I can't remember. It was a good fun night, and I'm glad I went.
I missed last week due to other committments, and we had guest instructor. She actually teaches the intro class that's there after us, and came a little early tonight. She lead everyone through a routine they came up with last weekend to a bouncy version of Pennies From Heaven. And in the middle was about 16 bars of pure improvisation. I was almost able to follow it up to that point. That was a lot of fun.
We ran through the time step again, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I feel clompy and awkward, but I'm making the right moves and sounds, mostly. There's a single, double and triple time step, and I actually find the triple easier than the double, although at speed I think I end up doing a single. The difference is that the triple is a shuffle-step, where the double is a phalap, and I find phalaps harder than shuffles. Again, at speed, these things just become a step. It'll come.
What I struggle with is the break. It's not hard, but it has to be jumped into pronto and I seem to be off balance most of the time going into it. Then it jumps back into the time step. It's kind of cool when it works - single time step, break, double time step, break, triple time step, break.
Then there was the traveling time step. I managed to pick that up pretty well after a couple of repetitions, but by now of course, I've totally forgotten it. The break for it was hard to get, and I think it was because it was mostly a rigid beat. The steps in it we've done lots, but with the beat, it slowed some stuff down, so that it was almost a balance issue. (Well, just about everything in tap is a balance issue for me.)
We did the C-Jam Blues thing, a few times all the way through, just to keep it in our heads. We didn't get to the stroll this time, though.
One interesting thing Tanis showed us was a couple of what she called trick steps. One was where we'd jump up and back, and while we do that we smack our toes against the floor as we were rising (theoretically, that is) then land on our toes and drop our heels right away.
The other was wings. Again jumping up, then with both feet at the same time, doing a sideways shuffle and landing on the toes and dropping the heels. It was impossible to do either of these, even with the bar.
Lots of other stuff we got to, I can't remember. It was a good fun night, and I'm glad I went.
posted by Kelly at
6:49 PM
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