Posts Tagged ‘tap dance’

Stagestep, maker of dance and theatrical flooring for four decades, has introduced Super Timestep flooring, which offers the flexibility of a marley-type floor with the enhanced durability and wear of Timestep. It’s appropriate for all styles of dance, including tap.

Available in black and gray, Super Timestep is 6.58 feet wide by up to 65 feet long. The floor, which is 2.3 mm thick, weighs 5.5 pounds per square yard.

At $28 per square yard (plus shipping and handling), Super Timestep has a low price guarantee on comparable flooring. For more information, call 800.523.0960 or visit www.stagestep.com.

Chicago Human Rhythm Project, the city’s hub for tap dance performance and education, will hold “Roaring in Our Twenties,” a gala benefit, at 5:30 p.m. October 25 on the Jay Pritzker Pavilion Stage in the city’s Millennium Park.

The evening begins with a cocktail reception and silent auction, followed by performances by CHRP’s performing ensemble BAM! and other tap and percussive artists from Chicago and beyond. The evening will conclude with dinner and a dessert reception where guests can meet the evening’s performers.

Tickets go for $150, $250, and $500. To buy them or to learn more, visit www.chicagotap.org or call 773.281.1825.

Avi Miller and Ofer Ben, known as The Israeli Hoofers, have a packed tap-dance teaching and performance travel schedule through the end of August.

July 23-25: The Pulse & Broadway Dance Center teachers workshop in New York City; www.Summer2010.ThePulseOnTour.com/teacherfaculty.html or 877.PULSE.01 (785.7301).

July 26-31: St. Louis Tap Festival, Clayton, Missouri; www.StLouisTapFestival.com or 314.531.TAPS (8277).
August 2-4: Dance Teacher Summit, New York City; www.DanceTeacherSummit.com or 212.767.0744.
August 8-11: Dance Teacher Web Conference & Expo, Las Vegas; www.DanceTeacherConferenceExpo.com/coverpage.html or 203.545.7167.
August 14-15: Tampa Bay Tap Festival, Clearwater, Florida; www.HoffmanPerformingArts.org or 727.712.2706 or 727.712.2726.
August 21-22: Southeastern Tap Explosion, Roswell, Georgia; www.SoutheasternTapExplosion.org or 770.971.2993.

The pair’s Miller & Ben Tap Shoes will be sold at all their stops around the country. For more information, visit www.JazzTapCenter.com.

Chicago Tap Theatre will present the debuts of works by Eddy Ocampo and the company’s artistic director, Mark Yonally, on June 19 in its new show, “Tap Out Loud.”

Mark Yonally’s Trip Ticket is on the program June 19 for Chicago Tap Theatre. (Photo by Kristie Kahns)

Yonally’s piece is a 12-minute suite set to hit songs by Queen, which will be performed by the Lakeside Pride Freedom Marching Band and the Chicago Red Line Choir. Ocampo’s new experimental piece, Lab, blends fluid jazz movements contrasted with explosive tap choreography.

Also on the program are Yonally’s Trip Ticket; a piece, Thug Life, by Kyle Vincent Terry in his kinetic dance combat style; and Brenda Bufalino’s Flying Turtles.

“Tap Out Loud” starts at 8 p.m. at the Athenaeum Theatre Mainstage, 2936 N. Southport, Chicago. Tickets are $30 for adults, $23 for seniors, and $18 for students or dancers. Discounts are available for groups of 10 or more. To order tickets, call 800.982.2787 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.

Jacob’s Pillow has free, open-to-the-public tap-related events, from performances to book signings, scheduled for this year’s annual dance festival in Becket, Massachusetts. In the spirit of National Tap Dance Day—which was May 25—here’s a sampling

The public is invited to watch leading tap artists work with dancers in the School at Jacob’s Pillow Tap Program on Tuesdays through Saturdays from June 28 to July 11. (Visits by parties of more than four people should be arranged in advance by calling 413.243.9919, extension 169.) The program is led by Dianne “Lady Di” Walker, and the faculty includes Harold Cromer, Derick K. Grant, Ray Hesselink, and Tasha Lawson.

Constance Valis Hill will talk about her book, Tap Dancing America, at 5 p.m. July 1 at Blake’s Barn. Tappers Harold Cromer and Dianne Walker will be on hand with Hill to sign copies.

Tap students will get to perform in a range of styles in public showings in the festival’s free Inside/Out series. A question-and-answer session with faculty and dancers will follow the showings at 6:15 p.m. July 3 and 10.

Boston Tap Company will perform as part of Let’s Dance!—a community-wide event from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. July 4 that will include free performances; open dance classes and workshops for adults and teens in a variety of movement styles; a free master class with Doris Duke Theatre artist Camille A. Brown; a raffle; and other attractions.

To learn more, visit www.jacobspillow.org.

Veteran tap teacher Debbie Fratta is leading an eight-week program in tap and rhythm from April 16 through June 11 at the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts in Torrington, Connecticut, as part of the conservatory’s Arts Extension Program.

The program is intended for dancers of varying levels of expertise, including those with no prior tap training. It costs $120, plus a $15 registration fee. For details, call 860.482.4413, extension 316, or visit www.nutmegconservatory.org.

An un-birthday party for tapper and writer Jane Goldberg (real birthday: February 2) will start at 7 P.M. March 18 at Revolution Books as a benefit evening for the New York City bookstore. She’ll be signing copies of her book “Shoot Me While I’m Happy: Memories from the Tap Goddess of the Lower East Side.”

The benefit at the store at 146 West 26th Street is co-hosted by Lisa La Touche, whose group, the L-Touch Tap Phonics, will perform, with Jerome Jennings on drums with Joseph Webb, Michela Lerman, Sean Jackson, Claudia Rahardjanoto, and other tappers. And yes, there will be cake.

Tickets are $20 ($15 for Goldberg’s friends and $10 for tappers who bring their shoes). Premium benefit tickets at $50 include a copy of Goldberg’s book. Call Revolution Books for reservations (strongly advised) at 212.691.3345.

Brenda Bufalino, Barbara Duffy, and Tony Waag will be among the choreographers pitching in for the second annual “Sound Check” concert, staged by the American Tap Dance Foundation to show the breadth of tap in the United States. “Sound Check” will run for six performances April 14 to 18 at Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street in New York.

The show is co-directed by Bufalino and Waag (who’s also the foundation’s founder and director), with musical direction by drummer Bernice “Boom Boom” Brooks. Performers will include the New American Tap Dance Orchestra, Harold Cromer, Barbara Duffy and Company, Cartier Williams, Middle Eastern dancer Ranya Renee, and flamenco dancer Aurora Reyes.

Tickets are $25 ($15 for students, seniors, and children). To order them, call
212.924.0007 or visit the venue’s website, www.dtw.org. (Tickets are $125 for the April 15 show, a benefit performance; for reservations call ATDF at 646.230.9564.) For more information, visit the foundation’s website, www.atdf.org.

Karen Callaway Williams, a charter member of the New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble, has just had her first children’s book published. Gabriella’s Tap Shoes tells the story of a precocious little girl who wants to duplicate the sound of tap shoes but has trouble finding the right type of metal to place on the bottom of her shoes.

The 28-page paperback from BookSurge Publishing is illustrated by Patricia A. Carroll and available on Amazon.com. It’s meant for youngsters who read at the age-9-to-12 level.

Knock On Wood’s way with rhythm tap

By Lisa Traiger

Plenty of dance teachers can get a 6-year-old to master a shuffle-ball-change. And with enough repetitions, the kid might even smile while doing it at the end-of-year recital.

Students as young as “Ms. Leanne’s” 5- and 6-year-old beginners learn about musicality at Knock On Wood. (Photo by Margaret Loomis)

But when it comes to teaching tap, among the Washington, DC, region’s best-kept secrets is Knock On Wood Tap Studio, nestled in the basement of a building filled with doctors’ offices. The studio, in a former jewelry store where costumes and a tap shoe bank now line the shelves of the old vault, is a cozy beehive of rhythm, with a touch of funk and jazz tossed in for good measure.

The studio’s founder and master teacher, Yvonne Edwards, affectionately known far and wide as “the Tap Lady,” and a cadre of experienced tap instructors work magic in a few windowless basement studios just a hop, skip, and jump over the District line in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The specialty: rhythm tap. Edwards and her crew pass on more than steps; they train students to fully assimilate musicality and gain confidence in improvisation. Here tap is serious business, even when the kids gambol out of class smiling. At Knock On Wood, from the littlest 4-year-olds to the hesitant adult beginners, from the gawky pre-teens to the fearless advanced teens in the critically acclaimed youth ensemble, Tappers With Attitude, improvisation rules. It stands as a core principle in the school’s thoughtful syllabus, developed by studio director Edwards (who co-founded Knock On Wood with Renee Kreithen) and executive artistic director Victoria Moss.

In a Saturday morning class with a group of wiggly 5-year-olds, you can hear their thin voices chanting, in singsong, “Jack and Jill,” which accompanies their tiny tapping feet. Moss explains, “First we learn the words. Then we learn to clap it. Then we learn to snap it, and that’s fun because most 5-year-olds can’t snap. Then we learn to count it. They don’t necessarily understand it, but they all learn it: 1 and 2 and 3. Then they learn a step: shuffle, step, shuffle-ball-change, flap flap, flap. Then they learn to sing the words of the step as well as to do the words of the step.”

Ultimately, by the end of term they’ve learned six or seven ways to think about the material, Moss says. “Then,” she smiles, “I blow everybody’s mind when they go to the studio’s open-mic night and they do it all. Sometimes they do them all at once: One sings, one claps, one snaps, one taps, one counts, and the grownup dancers in the audience who understand how really difficult that is, they’re blown away. The kids? They don’t know that was difficult. They just know it’s ‘Jack and Jill.’ ”

The syllabus expands from there, as children enrich their tap vocabulary, moving from single-sound steps to double-, then triple- and four-sound steps. But they also continue to practice improv, from clapping their names rhythmically to pounding out a phrase that illustrates being angry with Mom. It all counts in building confident and independent tap dancers who, Edwards and Moss hope, can one day hold their own in the center of a jam circle. And Edwards says that no teacher worth her salt would let a kid finish out a semester without mastering the fundamentals of the shim sham, tap dance’s national anthem.

Knock On Wood’s teachers use the syllabus as a guide, not a mandate. It doesn’t contain any specific step combinations; instead it’s a compilation of expected skills, movement vocabulary, and other tap information that students should master. Teachers also continually work on dynamics, timbre, clarity of tone, basic body alignment, and presentation skills with their developing dancers. After completing level 3, which could take three to six years depending on the age the child started and his proficiency, a student should understand musical structure and rhythm, be comfortable with improv and jamming, pick up steps in a master class quickly by ear and by sight, dance at a variety of tempos (including very slowly), understand how to maintain balance, be able to shift weight quickly, and maintain a strong working core.

On top of that, Edwards and Moss feel strongly that tap history receives its due in every class. Big names from tap’s heyday—Bunny Briggs, Charles “Honi” Coles, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Buster Brown, and Jimmy Slyde, to name a few—aren’t forgotten, they’re honored. Each semester students learn about one or more master artists through personal stories recounted by Miss Yvonne, as well as video and exercises replicating masters’ signature steps.

Finally, nobody gets through the full syllabus without learning four specific dances. In level 1A, it’s the basic shim sham. In 1B the students complete the shim sham, with more emphasis on ear training and finding the “1” in music. In 2A, they learn the Honi Coles stroll/walkaround, another 20th-century tap dance classic, and continue refining and expanding on the shim sham by adding breaks. By 2B, students expand their proficiency, learning the buck-and-wing time step with complete break, refining turns, and learning Edwards’ own Ain’t She Sweet, a more complex dance. In level 3, the step complexity increases with wings, pickups, trenches, complicated turns, and the final dance in the basic Knock On Wood repertoire, Baakari Wilder’s My Blue Heaven, which introduces contemporary rhythmic syncopation and a funkier, earthier style of tap.

At this point Edwards and Moss don’t care whether students progress to levels 4 and 5, which concentrate on fine-tuning rhythm tap, improvisation, and performance. Many, in fact, choose to remain at level 3 for further mastery.

Between them, Edwards and Moss have nearly 100 years of teaching experience. Edwards, now 74, has been at it for 61 years. She started as a student at Doris Jones Dance Studio in Washington, DC, one of the few places in the country at that time that taught classical ballet to African Americans. She and legendary singer-dancer-actress Chita Rivera sometimes took classes together.

Soon Edwards joined up with her sister-in-law, Chloe Price Shepherd, a dance teacher in Atlantic City, where the two taught children of the casino owners and workers. But Edwards also soaked up the style of old-time hoofers like the Nicholas Brothers and Sammy Davis Jr., who played the casinos. “Sometimes I didn’t know what they were doing, but I was trying. I learned a lot from just improv-ing with them,” Edwards recalls.

Moss grew up in Chicago, assimilating a smattering of many dance forms from Irish to tap, ballet to hornpipe, hula, and modern in her weekly dance class. At Knock On Wood she put her early training to good use in devising the detailed syllabus that takes tap students from rank beginner to pro. It’s a systematic method that focuses on the fundamentals and allows for multiple paths to learning: visual, aural, through counts, songs, patterning, art projects, and a dozen other tried-and-true tricks.

‘We want to give our students their own voices, and the only way you can develop your own voice is by having exposure to lots of different people.’ —executive director Victoria Moss

“We want to give our students their own voices,” Moss says, “and the only way you can develop your own voice is by having exposure to lots of different people. Otherwise they all turn out looking like ‘Miss Suzie.’ And she might be a great dancer, but it’s not our goal to re-create Miss Suzie.” Instead, the school’s teachers include a master Irish sean-nós dancer, a tapper with jazz experience, a Broadway hoofer, and a few rhythm tappers, along with Edwards and Moss. But they also continually bring in guest and master teachers from around the country and the world. They also invite modern dancers, bharata natyam specialists, salsa and flamenco teachers, a South African gumboot dancer, and others for enriching yearlong and summer workshops.

No matter that not everyone turns pro. Edwards says, “I just love to teach. I love to go into the room and look at the kids and teach. Not all of them are going to be dancers, but I don’t think of them as not being dancers. I try to give [them] the same focus and interest as I do to the members of the [Tappers With Attitude] company. They may never become dancers, but I want them to be able to appreciate the art of tap dancing, to become good audience members.”

Yet more than a few alums have found success with a pair of tap shoes. Among them are Baakari Wilder, who danced in the cast of Savion Glover’s expansive survey of tap in America, Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk; Cartier Williams, another Glover protégé, who while still in high school appeared in Noise/Funk and toured with Glover’s group, Ti Dii; Chloe Arnold, a body-double dancer for Beyoncé in Idlewild; and R&B singer Mya.

“One thing that’s great about tap in general and about the way Knock On Wood approaches tap,” says recent graduate Lena Solow, 18, “is that anybody can do it. That made it easy for me, a kid who didn’t have an easy time with ballet. Tap was something I could definitely do.” Currently a freshman at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Solow started tap at 5. “From a very early age [there] you have to do improv and make up your own rhythms to go along with the music,” she says.

“And because you’re not in a kick line or all doing the same exact arms and faces,” continues Solow, “you have to learn how to develop your own personality onstage, and that’s something that my teachers always talked about: how to portray yourself onstage. Tap is not about your feet; it’s really about your full body.”

As for the school’s success, Moss and Edwards attribute it to being invested in the dance community at large. Neither of them worries when students take classes at other studios. In fact, they might send an intermediate or advanced student off to study ballet or modern if they believe the additional training will improve the kid’s tap. They open all master classes to the public and encourage their students to attend other studios’ master classes when appropriate.

“While there are only so many students to go around,” Moss says, “I think over time people here [in the DC area] have worked really hard to play well with others. In my mind it’s not only best for dancers, but it’s best for us as an industry: to learn to be open to each other, to learn how to use each others’ expertise, to not be afraid of losing something. I might temporarily lose a student, but if that student grows, then they’re ready for their next phase. It’s that law of karma.”

“I was always taught that the most important thing is that you have to listen to the music, go along with the music and not just do a really flashy step,” says lanky Baakari Wilder, 32, an alum who started dancing at 3 and now teaches the advanced Monday night class at Knock On Wood. “You have to learn when to fall and, when you make mistakes, how to pick up again,” he says. “When I teach improv, it’s about getting people to focus on the timing and keep it basic. I want my students to dance within the meter—if they do nothing else, keep it in the meter.”

Edwards says that’s what she tells her students also. Tap is, first and foremost, about rhythm. She believes that learning tap is akin to learning a musical instrument and even encourages students to practice, at minimum, 15 to 20 minutes a day, just like any beginning band student.

“We’re trying,” Edwards says, “to keep tap alive. Then it’s your job to make it your own.”

How tap training benefits ballet dancers

By Joshua Bartlett

Tap and ballet. They’ve been the bread and butter of most American dance studios since the post-Depression years. Today studios offer a variety of other dance forms like lyrical, modern, hip-hop, and body conditioning courses like Pilates. But the combination of tap and ballet as a basic dance curriculum has produced a steady crop of dancers for each generation.

So if these two very different dance forms have provided the backbone of American dance training, how do they relate in terms of exchanging technical and artistic benefits to dancers? More specifically, how does studying tap help ballet dancers become better ballet dancers?

The most obvious answer lies in the way that tap dancers develop keen musical ears through the application of complicated rhythms. Vicki McLean, the academy director and ballet mistress for the Lone Star Ballet in Amarillo, TX, has always stressed the tap curriculum for that studio. “The main thing about tap is that it benefits all dancers, not just ballet dancers, because of the rhythm of the music,” says McLean. “One of the ways that I teach is that if you can clap out the rhythm of the step, you can do it either with a tap shoe or ballet shoe. I don’t care if it’s Giselle or 42nd Street, you have to get the rhythm of the music.”

Graham Lustig, who directs American Repertory Ballet (pictured here are company dancers Joe Bunn and Kristin Scott), says that tap teaches dancers a musical discipline that transfers to ballet. (Photo by Eduardo Patino)

Graham Lustig, artistic director of American Repertory Ballet in Princeton, NJ, began tap and ballet training at a small studio in West London at a young age and continued tapping until he was 14. “There is something definitive about making sounds with your feet,” says Lustig, who trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined Dutch National Ballet at age 18. “In ballet there is a little room for leaning forward or backward on a waltz beat or a note. That isn’t the case with tap—you’re either on the beat or not. It teaches you a musical discipline which you can transfer to ballet.”

McLean compares tap dancers to the drummers in bands. “The drummer holds the band together with the rhythm. Rhythm holds ballet dancers to what they are supposed to do,” she says. For example, a dance phrase might include an elongated movement, followed by two quick beats, followed by an elongated movement. “Ballet dancers have to learn to listen,” she adds. “I had a wonderful tap teacher who did all the classics in his tap shoes. He would add rhythmical movements and sounds to Swan Lake. All of a sudden you would hear a different tonal quality. I carried that with me through many years of study.”

Another advantage to studying tap emerges in the speed that both tap and ballet require. “I think tap helps tremendously with ballet, particularly with the allegro, the quick movement, the quick change of weight,” says Fred Knecht, who founded Knecht Dance Academy with his wife in Levittown, PA, 49 years ago.

Joseph Fritz, the deputy dance director at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, began tap classes at age 8, before he started ballet training. “Because of tap, I was always good at petit allegro combinations and moving from one side to the other side.”

Tapping also augments coordination of movement. “All tapping is done on the ball of the foot,” says Fritz. “You never have your heel down except when you stomp. Being on your toes enables you to move quickly from one spot to another. It’s like watching the best boxers—they’re always on their toes, not back on their heels. It enables you to move quicker and have better coordination.”

The weight change required of tapping can aid dancers in understanding the off-balance movement required in Balanchine ballets and other contemporary and neoclassical choreography. “In tap the weight changes are sophisticated, fine, and very fast,” says Lustig. “You work different parts of the foot. When you scuff and slide, you take the center of gravity off the regular center of ballet.”

At Denise’s Dance Connection, run by Denise Ronco in Rochester, NY, all students are required to study ballet and tap before they can take hip-hop. “The more knowledge you have of different dance forms, the better equipped you are to handle a dance career,” says Ronco. “In this day and age, you need to be a well-rounded dancer.”

McLean agrees that versatility offers an advantage. “They used to talk about a triple threat. Now you have to be a multiple threat,” says McLean, who danced in ballet and jazz companies and had a recurring acting role on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. “Ninety-nine percent of my students who are really good ballet students are also good tappers.”

Some ballets include tap in their choreography. The most famous, Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, features an extended tap solo for the Champion Roper when he tries to impress the Cowgirl. (Knecht remembers that when Rodeo was first danced in 1942, the tap dancing didn’t impress all balletomanes. “People thought it was horrible that they were going to have tap dancing in a ballet. They frowned on it,” he says.) When New Jersey Ballet mounted a production of Rodeo, Fritz danced the Champion Roper because so few of the company men knew even rudimentary tap steps. Now, he points out, half of the dancers at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet started with tap.

In George Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, excerpted from the musical On Your Toes, the lead male is a hoofer who falls in love with a dance-hall girl. Jerome Robbins referenced tap steps in his wartime sailor ballet, Fancy Free. Twyla Tharp directly used tap in Eight Jelly Rolls and slyly threw in tap moves in ballets like Baker’s Dozen and Nine Sinatra Songs. And in Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée, the Widow Simone does a wooden clog dance that requires some of tap’s rhythmic virtuosity.

Every big ballet company requires character dancing from its performers in ballets like Swan Lake and Don Quixote. Anyone who has sat through lame national dances in the third act of Swan Lake can tell which dancers have had only ballet training. “Tap helped me with my character and folk dancing, because of the rhythmic work with the feet,” says Lustig. “It also taught me how to stay grounded.” When the Metropolitan Opera staged a production of Carmen, the flamenco choreographer Maria Benítez chose Fritz as a soloist because he quickly picked up the complicated rhythms necessary for flamenco footwork.

‘The main thing about tap is that it benefits all dancers, not just ballet dancers, because of the rhythm. . . . I don’t care if it’s Giselle or 42nd Street, you have to get the rhythm of the music.’ —Vicki McLean, Lone Star Ballet

Learning tap is invaluable for ballet dancers who decide to audition for Broadway shows or other theatrical dancing. One of Knecht’s star students, Nadine Isenegger, has served as the understudy to Cassie in the current Broadway production of A Chorus Line (she has performed the role about 40 times) and was cast as the ingénue, Peggy Sawyer, in the tap dance spectacular 42nd Street.

Dance students sometimes forget that ballet is a theatrical art form, something that is always evident in tap dancing. Most young ballet students, fixated on learning positions and vocabulary, tend not to relax into movement and make it spontaneous. “This is the critical difference with tap—you completely let go and surrender,” says Lustig, who introduced tap into ARB’s Princeton Ballet School curriculum when he took the reins in 1999. “That’s not what you are thinking when you are 7 years old, learning your first glissade or jeté. With tap there is all this fun stuff you can do. You are usually dancing to a completely different type of music and letting your hair down. It’s a buoyant, optimistic experience, as opposed to doing a ballet solo when you are young, [where] the challenges can take away from the sheer joy of doing it.”

The evolution and histories of ballet and tap couldn’t be more different, particularly in terms of class distinction, although both were invented as a means of entertainment. The roots of tap dancing came from Irish solo step dance, African dance forms, and the English clog dance. Among black American slaves, buck-and-wing dancing became popular, which made its way into 19th-century minstrel shows and showboat performances. The soft shoes eventually gave way to metal-plated soles in the 20th century, and more sophisticated forms of tap appeared in vaudeville reviews, Broadway shows, and on the silver screen.

Ballet, on the other hand, began in 1661 when Louis XIV formed the Académie Royale de Danse. Designed specifically for the royal courtiers, the dance technique included many ballet steps and positions recognizable today (including turned-out positions). The opera ballet soon developed, and the art and technique of ballet blossomed through the 18th and 19th centuries.

Of course, the sheer polar opposition of ballet and tap appealed to Americans, who created new art forms by combining existing ones. The cross-pollination of ballet and tap, along with other dance forms, has produced a uniquely American hybridization. A good example of the breeding of tap and ballet is the oddity called toe-tapping—dancing on pointe with taps attached to the platform of the shoe. Harriet Hoctor, a 1930s Broadway vaudevillian, created a sensation by toe-tapping up and down escalators and tapping out the meter to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven.”

So what about the reverse of the original question: How does ballet benefit tap dancers? Some teachers think it helps tremendously, while others are not entirely sold. Linda Lavender Ford, the director of Linda Lavender School of Dance in Monroe, LA, thinks that ballet training is an essential element in tap dancing. “Ballet is the basis for everything. I really think that if you can’t do ballet, you can’t do tap,” says Ford, who loves the elegance of old-style tap dancers like Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. “You have to have that body placement and center and control. Once you have seen a ballet-trained dancer and one who isn’t, the difference is obvious. The ballet port de bras is necessary for good tap dancing.”

Fritz disagrees. “It’s a totally different ball game,” he says. “If you have studied ballet all your life, you might struggle to pick up the tap steps.” That opinion probably rings most true among dancers who have been rigidly trained in ballet.

Lustig sees reasoning to both sides of the argument. He remembers that as a child it took him a full year to learn not to turn out while tap dancing. However, because ballet requires slower work and deep analytical thinking, he feels that it can help tap dancers understand where the movement is coming from, like the placement of the arms from deep inside the back. “Pirouettes and steps like chassé en tournant, you can translate into tap,” he says. “It also helps dancers to understand the principle of spotting pirouettes and a sense of control.”

In this era, when dancers are required to do just about everything—look at the popularity of the TV show So You Think You Can Dance—the more you know, the more you can better your career. Tap and ballet may be very different creatures, but certainly knowing tap technique can help a ballet dancer become a more dynamic performer.