Tapping into a new form of dance

With the noisy tap shoes, I begin to produce an entirely new sound. Stomp, hop, shuffle, step, flap, step, stomp and repeat—one of the simplest routines for any tap dancer. It took me an hour to memorize this routine in the correct order and still I looked like an off-balance leprechaun, ungracefully clomping my large feet all over the place.

I have never really used my feet for anything that required such detailed movement besides occasionally wiggling them around out of boredom. It was not until senior Rachel Le tried to teach me how to tap dance for a dance-off against my fellow newspaper reporters that I realized how incapable of grace my feet really are.

Rachel broke down each move for me, but whatever foot she told me to stomp, I would move the opposite one.

It was not that I did not listen or could not process what she directed me to do; movements that required so much control over my feet were just too foreign for me.

“While I was teaching, it was difficult and took a lot of patience because the moves that I do mindlessly made no sense to Vivien,” Le said.

Foot dexterity has been engraved into Le’s mind. Le was brought to her first tap dancing class when she was 3 years old and has been doing it for the past 14 years. With a couple hours of practice each week, she took a part in a dance recital when she was 6.

“Since I was so young when I started,” Le said, “I picked it up easily, like how toddlers can pick up a new language, so I didn’t realize how tricky it was for people starting now.”

This does not mean, however, that it is impossible to start at a later age.

Le advises a beginner to “practice until it becomes a rhythm because the two things to make tap look and sound good are speed and accuracy.”

Before I tried it myself, I always thought tap dancing was impressive but not enough to grasp my attention for too long. It looked pretty easy to clack my feet around the ground to produce a noise.

According to Le, people assume tap is always jolly and old-fashioned; however, it can modernized and performed to pop music just like any other style of dance.

“The funnest part about tap is being able to create so much noise with only my feet,” Le said. “Once you get the routine, you’ll hear it, and it’s a really satisfying feeling.”

I was momentarily blessed with this feeling during the dance-off in which I produced a video of all that I had learned.

This experience changed my mind as I gained a whole new appreciation for this form of art.

“I think Vivien did very well and she really learned how to appreciate it,” Le said.