My Philly/Charlottesville Tap Dance Chronicles (2003)

By Pamela Hetherington

How do you build a tap dance community?

Do you schedule classes, jams, special workshops, make one-off shows?

How do you mobilize people to this dance? How do you get people to care about what you do? So many questions come up, when you start building in this art form, that has almost nothing out there to guide you, except your own vision. In this way, it’s staggering that tap dance continues at all, but for those of us who know, it’s a powerful mistress.

I was confronted with those questions for the first time around 2003, when I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia for graduate school. I ostensibly moved down there to get a Masters degree and study and write and maybe get a private school teaching certification, but no surprise, I ended up dancing the entire time I was there. In 2003, there was actually a very hip and high-quality modern dance scene in Charlottesville, and I jumped right in. One of the first places I found was McGuffey Art Center, where I started taking class with Miki Liszt, Dinah Gray and Ashley Thorndike. Also, at that time, Zen Monkey Dance Project was producing a lot of great work, under the direction of Katharine Birdsall. Eventually, I started rehearsing and performing with the Miki Liszt Dance Company and Prospect Dance Group, which was directed by Dinah, Ashley and Peter Swendsen. Oh, and yes, minor side note....I was also living in Charlottesville, when I got to perform a jazzy opening number with THE Tony Bennett at the Paramount Theater! That's a story for another time.

So, when was I tap dancing? I wasn't. I didn't tap dance for the first six months I was in Charlottesville. After a half-hearted attempt to find an existing class, I concluded that tap dance just wasn't happening there. There was definitely tap dance going on in Washington D.C., but that was about 2 hours away by train. I figured I wouldn't be in Charlottesville long enough to start something up. I tried to scratch my dance itch with daily modern class and by doing these DIY shows all over Virginia.

Then, as it always does, tap dance said NOPE! And it found me.

I realized, very early on in my graduate program, that I wasn’t cut out to be an English professor. I thought that I loved to read big books and write academic papers, and I only applied to graduate school because I was sort of aimless and thought grad school might be fun, (in my defense, I was 22), and my undergraduate English professors suggested it. And, how could I be a tap dancer as a job? The universe has jokes, for sure.

I went to a fairly rigorous undergraduate school, and I imagined graduate school would be more of the same. Reading, writing, library research, somewhat competitive smart people, yadda yadda. I got my ass handed to me at UVa. I was literally speechless in class, because my colleagues were spouting ideas and theories that I could barely grasp. My writing was torn to shreds. There is a general rule that anything less than an “A” in graduate school is considered a failing grade. I got plenty of Bs and Cs. Gamely, though, I soldiered on. I read so much in graduate school that, when I got out, I didn’t look at a book for years.

Dance was my oxygen. Besides being very active in the modern dance performance scene, I luckily stepped into a bounty of dance teaching jobs. I see now that I wasn’t in Charlottesville to be a star student; I was there to get my start in dance education.

Because I hung around McGuffey Art Center constantly, and I guess I was shuffling my feet on a wood floor, (I really don’t remember), someone there suggested that I begin an adult tap dance class. I agreed, even though I had never taught adults before. I remember writing out endless warm-up combinations and phrases on tiny pieces of paper as cheat sheets, because I didn’t trust myself to come up with things on the spot. I was so afraid of running out of things to do in class. However, I can only imagine how amateur I looked squinting at these little post-its and trying to read off “shuffle hop…wait…no…shuffle step….” Word got out, though, and the class got pretty popular. Then, in 2004, I answered an ad for a part-time summer dance instructor job through the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department. After my interview, the director decided I should spearhead and run an entire tap dance program for kids and adults. From 2004-2006, I taught multiple youth and adult classes a week around the city at different recreation centers. Just like that, I was teaching five nights a week.

Then, as a result of that teaching work, I started meeting other tap dancers! This is one of my favorite tap dance stories, so get ready.

I was setting up for one of my adult tap classes at Carver Recreation Center, when I hear these shuffle pullbacks of death, positively barreling down the wood stage towards me. The feet were CR-ispy clean. When I heard these sounds, it was akin to hearing angels singing, "HALLELUJAH!" 

I look up, and I only see tap shoes on the stage, then this girl standing there, smiling. I'm thinking, "OK, feet of death, hello to you, too." Her name was Lauren Squires, and we struck up a tap dance friendship that exists to this day. Lauren now directs her own wildly successful tap dance company in Columbus, OH called Movement Afoot AND a dance space called Tap Shop. 

And then after that first shuffle pullback meeting, Lauren and I got together, rehearsed, made a couple of pieces for a show at the Live Arts Theater, and that was a lot of fun. So, yay?! I was in a new city, I thought I wouldn't even tap dance and I I ended up meeting tap dancers, I created some classes, I got a chance to perform a few times. End of story? 

Well, yes. That story ended when I moved back to Philadelphia in 2006. Lauren lives in Columbus. The small community that we managed to build in a year in Charlottesville did not sustain itself, according to Google.

But, for both of us, I think it's always been: OK, THEN WHAT. How do you keep going in tap dance? How do you get people to care about what you do? How do you find others like you? How do you motivate yourself to create new work?

The answers are still unfolding for the both of us.