I love an extra-curricular activity. Over the past couple of years I’ve taken up intuitive painting (a pseudo-abstract class where you paint what you’re “feeling”), French lessons and now – tap dancing. I figure that the moment you stop learning new things, life becomes as boring as
Bold and The Beautiful re-runs where Brooke and Ridge get married
yet again. Honestly, there’s nothing like a random hobby mid-week to keep the daily grind at bay, plus it serves as the best conversation starter at dinner parties. (“Guess what I’ve just started doing … omigod you’ll never guess”).
So anyway, I attended my first tap dancing lesson last Thursday night with three other magazine girls. There I was, decked out in my lovely new black Mary Jane tap shoes from Bloch, matching black tights and with my hair tied back in a dancer’s bun (I also planned on wearing white frilling socks with a lace trim, but these are actually really hard to find. Anyone have any tips?).
Here’s what I learned from that first class:
Lesson number one: Tap dancing is actually freaking hard. I am a huge fan of tap-dancing in film – there’s
Singin’ In The Rain;
Bootmen; I even love that scene at the end of the original
Annie when she and Daddy Warbucks suddenly break out tip tapping – but, in real life … incredibly hard. You have to spend most of the time just using the ball of the shoe (ie, front tap) so you’re weirdly poised on tip-toe shuffling back and forth while cussing yourself when you accidentally hit the back tap. Which brings me on to the next point …
Lesson number two: When you’re concentrating hard, you stiffen up. Unfortunately there were no mirrors in our community hall, but if there was I’m sure I’d be staring back at an uncoordinated version of a robot slash zombie from
Thriller who is acting like they have something on their shoe and are subsequently trying to shake it off. Not the best look.
Lesson number three: There were more men in the class that I anticipated (about five). And I loved this. Husbands accompanying former showbiz wives, one 60+ man who I’m convinced was an original Bojangles in his heyday, and my favourite – a fashionable yet stocky, long-haired man wearing harem pants. I couldn’t have made this last part up if I wanted to.
Lesson number four: The teacher is always going to show off a little. She actually took it upon herself to demonstrate some complicated kickback move thingy (can’t remember the exact name). But in her words: “When you go to see
Tap Dogs, one guy does this continuously across the stage without stopping. And that takes huge strength.” So naturally she takes it upon herself to show us said move despite her reiterating it will take a
looooong time before we can even
attempt it. Which again, brings me to the next point …
Lesson number five: There is always going to be someone who falls over. After seeing our modest teacher show us her moves, people automatically copied her. One poor lady clipped her foot and fell like a bag of spuds straight onto her backside. Poor thing. She was so embarrassed. I maintain that I blame the teacher.
Anf finally ....
Lesson number six: You may think that you have the most amazing looking tap shoes (see above: those Mary Janes). But as it turns out there is a Bloch in every other suburb so chances are most women in your class will have
exactly the same footwear, right down to the height of your little heel. This isn’t a problem ... until you spot another woman roughly your age wearing black-and-white-brogue tap shoes. I was green. They were the coolest clodhoppers I’d ever seen. I've decided I'm going to make her my friend next week.
I will be sure to keep you up-to-date with my progress ... or perhaps, lack thereof.
Jessica Montague is madison’s features writer and sub-editor. You can follow her on Twitter here