My Philly Tap Dance Chronicles (1984-1990)

By Pamela Hetherington

Tricky to explain how kids encounter dance teachers in the first place. My mother claims that dance classes for me never crossed her mind, until one day, a 3-year-old Pam marched over to her and said, “I want to dance.” However, at that age, parents have to find a studio, pay for lessons, get the child dressed and out of the house, so it is a family investment by default. 

My first dance studio was picked for its convenience. In 1983, Northeast Dance Academy was located five blocks away from our house, in a little shopping center at Rhawn Street and Dungan Road. (The shopping center is still there; the dance studio long gone. It now houses a nail salon).

I remember the sounds of getting there: leaves on the sidewalk to crunch and kick. I remember objects: a tall, steep staircase to a basement studio and a long hallway, a cold, gray metal barre on a dark wood-paneled wall, a slim teacher with a maroon maxi ballet skirt. I remember what I wore: a pink ribbon on my left ankle to distinguish my two feet. I remember performing. One of my tap routines to “Put on a Happy Face” involved a pink paper plate prop with a face drawn on it. I remember exactly how we had to sing, hold the prop in front of our faces and then slide it off the floor to continue our routine. I remember the costumes. An enterprising dance teacher ordered us “2-in-1” tutus. For ballet, they looked like regular tutus; for tap, they transformed into tulle bustles.

There are a lot of blanks. My mother recounts that she can still picture my excitement: skipping and running down the block to get to the studio. And, that during recitals, I was the only one who ever knew the routines from start to finish, although I am chalking that one up to reporting bias. At that age, the dance teachers hide in the wings.

My next dance studio was not near my house - in fact, my mother and I had to take two buses to get there - but that distance was a by-product of graduating from a “studio-for-convenience” to a “studio-for-real.” After decades of teaching and now owning a dance studio myself, I see the shift happen around age seven, which is when it happened for me, too. It is the point at which kids grow out of the ‘baby classes,’ and (kids/parents) either quit or (parents) decide to keep going. 

My first studio-for-real was Miss Joan’s School of Dance at Cottman and Revere Streets in Mayfair. I had been a student at Northeast Dance Academy for three years, and I showed ability in dance. The turning point for my mother was a school talent show in which myself, and then two kids my age, both performed tap dance routines. My mother was so impressed by the other two kids’ performance, (not so much me, I guess), that she hunted down one of the mothers for information about this other dance studio that produced tiny, well-timed dancers. My parents might have been conservative about this hobby of mine, but as children of immigrants, they demanded superior excellence in literally everything my brother and I did. So, if I was going to dance, and they were going to pay money for it, then they were going to find the teacher who would make me work the hardest at it. 

In the summer of 1986, I took my first private placement class with Miss Joan at her one room studio. It was a gray, low-ceilinged space with a linoleum floor turned black from tap dust. The waiting area was no more than four folding chairs next to the dance floor, just separated by a half-wall that you could step over. Miss Joan’s office, where she corralled parents for weekly tuition payments, was just an alcove off the waiting area, where she also kept huge piles of papers and costumes. There was also a small room at the end of the dance floor, covered by a red curtain, where we would pretend to be ‘offstage,’ and Miss Joan kept her hundreds of vinyl records and acrobatic mats. All of the classes - tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, acrobatics, pointe and “toe tap” -  were taught by Miss Joan. 

Upon entering her studio, you could not avoid noticing the glossy color photo of a beaming Miss Joan in a white fringe dress and a man in a bell-bottomed suit, posed in a promotional ballroom dance hold, because it was tacked front and center on her bulletin board. You would expect that such a photo would invite questions, but if a curious child did ask about the man holding Miss Joan in a dip, her response was closed. He had died in a motorcycle accident. They had been engaged. From that point on, every time you walked into the studio, the photo felt like a mousetrap that was about to go off. You knew not to ask about it again. 

Similarly, her teaching style was terse. Miss Joan taught by her own graded system, similar to a pass/fail format. After completing my placement class, according to her evaluation, I was nowhere near ready to dance with the other kids my age. So, for an entire summer, I sweated in her stuffy, windowless studio through private lessons and group classes, until I learned the technique I needed even to join her studio. I wanted to do well, and I was so afraid of Miss Joan, that I practiced everywhere. When September came, I was ready to join the seven year old class.

Compared to today’s standards for primary tap dance in your average dance studio, the level of technique Miss Joan demanded from my age group was advanced. We learned and memorized entire routines, at least three minutes in length, in various tempos and time signatures. For example, one of my first routines was a 3/4 waltz time version of “It’s a Most Unusual Day,” and we had to execute waltz clog progressions with at least fifteen different breaks. 

We learned formations, arm choreography and how to perform. I remember drilling tap dance entrances - a flap, flap, flap-ball-change, starting from the ‘backstage’ to the center mark - over and over again. Don’t forget, there were those classic “1980s” arms: held out to ones’ sides, bent elbows, flexed wrists.  By the age of eight, I was time-stepping while perched on a 2 foot by 2 foot wooden suitcase prop, that I had to carry, swing around, set down on a certain count, and then also, not fall off while doing my Buffalos. This is why, when my mother saw the kids at the talent show, she was dumbfounded by what they could do. I stepped into that same line. 

How we teach tap dance to young kids now has not changed in theory - it is still quite step-focused - but what has fallen to the wayside is accountability for improvement. That means: once a child learns a step, then that child should be able to demonstrate it alone. Their tone should be clear and their timing precise. Then, that child needs to be able to build upon their technique through consistent practicing at home and regular class two or three times a week. No magic bullet, no shortcut. Rigid, yes. Intense, definitely. But Miss Joan’s system worked. Anyone under her watchful eye and ear improved. Her mission consisted entirely of producing very fast, very clean tap dancers, and her way of fast-tracking improvement was by breeding competition. Maybe that’s why all I can remember about her is how she taught technique, which was by telling you what you were not doing “right.”