“I’m With the Band”

Dance Spirit Magazine just ran a great article by Kathryn Holmes on Tap dancers collaborating with musicians and the importance of understanding music! This is a great article because it mentions the lingo you should be familiar with when working with a band, and how to count music (we count in bars usually 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4 as opposed to counting 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8). There are some great tips from Michelle Dorrance and Margaret Morrison (who are both tremendous musicians) about the basics of breaking down music. If you are a Tap dancer and you are not familiar with this concept, READ THIS ARTICLE and enlist a musician friend to help you learn more! Jamming with live musicians is the best because of the energy you get from each other- amazing things are bound to happen.

Click here to read “I’m With the Band”

Weekly Recap: Week 10

Finding a groove. Being “in the pocket”. Phrasing.

These are all common terms to a tap dancer who understands improvisation and music. Sadly, this isn’t something that is always taught in Tap class. I think it is one of the most important and commonly overlooked components of Tap dance. By understanding improvisation and music, having a solid technical background, and being given the freedom of creative expression, a complete Tap dancer is made. We need to allow our students to express themselves creatively because it not only gives them a release if class, it also gives them valuable tools to express themselves out in the world.

Finding the foundation for improvisation is not always easy, so we tackled this in baby steps this week.

We worked to understand how to find a groove. It doesn’t have to be a difficult or jam packed with crazy rhythms, just something you can, well, groove to. Out of this groove we began to add layers with additional tones and rhythms to create a melody and we were on our way to freeing our voices. The students seemed to really enjoy this exercise because many of them had never done anything like this! We had parents watching through the window impressed with what they heard. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Understanding phrasing is also a key component in our foundation. By training yourself to count by feeling, you can let go and just listen. This frees you from the number “chains” and gives you the ability to listen to what the music is saying so that you can sing along with it. Being able to hear where the phrases begin and end allows you to create your song with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Always be clear with what you are saying and mean it!

In general, a good rule of thumb is to listen to music. Often. You don’t have to like every genre of music, but become familiar with what is out there. Every musician has something that makes them unique- especially how they choose to phrase their music. So listen to music you might not normally pick on a day to day basis, and see how (or if) it inspires you.

We also worked on some other musical components as well- tempo, dynamics, and accents. These play a HUGE part when it comes to expressing yourself because they are you punctuation marks! You don’t talk in a robot monotone voice when telling an interesting story- your voice gets louder or softer, changes pitch, becomes faster when you are excited, etc., and your music should do the same. Just because you may be telling a story with your feet and not your mouth doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting!

Here is a video of Jason Samuels Smith, one of the greatest and talented Tap dancers out there. He truly understands music, rhythm, and his voice, which allows him infinite freedom of expression when he is on the floor. Listen to the way he uses accents, dynamics, tempo, rhythm, and phrasing when creating his song.

Enjoy and Happy Tapping.

Weekly Recap: Week 8

This week’s main focus was on terminology. We worked last week on single and double sounds, and hit triple, quadruple, and some quintuplet sounds this week. Being able to recognize these sounds put together into steps like Buffalo, Maxi Ford, and Shuffle Ball Change will help when learning traditional choreography. Understanding how all these sounds and steps are executed enables you to pick them out when learning choreography and makes it easier to understand how to put them all together. Having a strong knowledge of these basics allows you to open the doors to improvisation and let your creativity run wild!

I currently am having a difficult time finding videos I like with breakdowns- stay tuned though as I will try to get one up.

We also continued to learn the Shim Sham, the B.S. Chorus, and the history behind them.

Another main focus was on how to count. Quarter notes (1 2 3 4); Eighth notes (1& 2& 3& 4&); Triplets (1&a 2&a 3&a 4&a), and Sixteenth notes (1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 4e&a). We worked on clapping rhythms of 1 or 2 bar phrases, then putting them into our feet using our single sounds. Being able to count, verbally say, and clap the rhythms made a HUGE difference in the quality of sound being produced- it was much cleaner and clearer, and the students felt more confident when executing the exercise.

Accents were also a part of this week’s lessons. I won’t go into detail on the actual exercises, but it all came down to weight change. Some exercises are much harder than the others (paddle and roll!) and were easily done slow, but it was quite a different story when asked to change from quarter notes to sixteenth notes all while keeping certain accents! We will continue to work those in class until we get it!