Let improvisation rock your world!

Stacie Strong | Feb 08, 2008 | 1

Want to feel like you've won the lottery, just got a date with someone you've been admiring for weeks, or have a snow day instead of a test?  Go do some tap improvisation out in public.  Not in a tap jam, where you're constantly judging yourself against everyone else.  I mean in a jazz or blues jam, where you work with live musicians and are the only tapper there - perhaps the only tapper they've ever seen or worked with.

Here's the scoop that you won't really appreciate fully until you've done it yourself - people love tap.  They love tap dancers.  They love that we make music with our feet ("Your feet?  Are you kidding?").  They love our freedom in movement.  They just love us, period - no matter whether we're doing a simple waltz clog or jazzing it up with some insane quadruple wing-pullback-shovel combination.  

And it's not just the audiences, though we obviously like to please them.  It's the other musicians on stage.  When I first thought about moving into the live music front, I was worried that the other musicians would shun me because I play an unconventional instrument, namely, my feet.  I could have not been more wrong.  Jazz and blues artists LOVE the unconventional.  They eat it up for breakfast and savor it for lunch and, if there's any left over for dinner, warm it up in the microwave and have it with ketchup.  I have had people who were not supposed to be on the bandstand for that number come up and ask to perform with me, just because they were so excited by what I was doing.  When I turn around at the end of a number to thank my fellow musicians, their faces are all lit up - "look at me, Ma, I jammed with a tap dancer!" - and it makes me both happy and relieved in a way that I can't describe.  Musicians who do improv get how hard it is to stand up on a stage with no material prepared in advance.  It's just you, your bandmates and the moment.  As a result, many of them - if not all of them - are incredibly generous and supportive.  There is nothing better in the world than to put yourself out there and have someone appreciate both the effort and the outcome.  

I love tap choreography and want to see more of it (if you have a performance coming up, let me know!).  But we as dancers need to embrace improvisation, even if - and maybe particularly if - it feels scary.  As the Zen saying goes, "Leap and the net will appear."  I remember I was on the phone with my tap mentor the day I had decided to go to my first non-tap jam.  He was telling me I would be fine, that I was ready and - though I didn't believe him - that everyone would love me (so I know what you skeptics out there are thinking!).  I needed to hear that and I took it to heart, but equally important was the realization that the first time would never get any easier.  I had prepared, I had practiced, I had taken instruction - but at the end of the day, I just had to lace up my tap shoes and do it (one of them came untied during my last number, but by that time I was on such a high that I didn't even care, which just goes to show how much fun it is!).

For those who want inspiration, here's a video of the great Dianne Walker dancing to the jazz classic, "Black Orpheus."  Though her performances include both choreography and improv, I'm pretty sure this piece is improvised, though I admit I haven't checked with her.  Either way, it is an astounding marriage of music and dance, and I am utterly in love with it, her and what she does.

So what's keeping you from getting out there and strutting your stuff?  What kinds of things would you want to know before you take the leap to public improvisation?  Let's hear about your concerns and worries.  Though ultimately everyone has to find their own way, there's nothing that says you can't get advice from people who've been there before!  

Tap rules - but improvisation rocks.

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Tap, Enthusiast, Performance (all tags)