The Philadelphia Community Tap Project

In 2003, 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.

At that time, there was 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!

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 22, I didn’t really know what else I wanted to do at the time, I thought grad school might be fun, 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, competitive smart people, yadda yadda. Well, I was wrong. 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 available dance teaching jobs. I see now that I wasn’t in Charlottesville to be a star student; I was there to pay my dues in community dance education.

I had some dance teaching experience prior to that. I assisted baby dance classes with my teacher, Ms. Rita, and I had my first real children’s tap class job at Chestnut Street Dance Academy, (now Urban Movement Arts), when I was in college. But I was definitely NOT a professional-level teacher, yet. I had to go through some major trenches.

Because I hung around McGuffey Art Center constantly, and I guess I was shuffling my feet on a wood floor, an art teacher there suggested that I begin an adult tap dance class. As is my ‘say yes’ personality, I agreed, even though I had never taught adults.

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.

In the summer of 2005, shortly after I learned I was going to be a mother, I remember calling my own mother in a panic. "My life is over," I weeped. "Your life is just beginning," she said.

When Violet arrived on February 24, 2006, I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia with no other family around. Violet’s father worked night shifts, and I worked a 9-5. I spent the first three months of her life, fumbling into my new role as a mother, alone. She was a terrible sleeper, and without me knowing any of the "sleep tricks" I know now, she woke up every two hours. I'd lie down with her at 6 pm, and by the time I'd have to get up for work at 6 am, in that 12-hour time span, I'd have logged about six hours of fragmented sleep. When he arrived back from work at 7 am, I'd hand her off to him, and I'd set off to do my eight hours of work. I'd take the baby from him as he walked out the door, and I'd do it all again, alone. Nothing or nobody could have prepared me for how hard this transition would be.

Still, I gamely tried to find time for my dancing. One early Saturday morning, when Violet was a month old and her father was at work, I hatched an escape plan in my mind. I'd pack a diaper bag, I'd bring her fold-up bouncy seat, I'd strap her into the baby carrier, and I'd lug all of the stuff and her to the bus stop, so that we could get to my regular pre-baby dance class by 10 am. Moms who know: we never made it out the door. But, just like all moms who dance, I came up with other hacks that worked: planning around naps, dance during the workday, dancing in your living room.

My life had begun with the birth of my first daughter. Before she came along, I had no idea of what I was capable of accomplishing. My life in dance certainly might have been different and much more linear, if I hadn't become a mother, but being a mom and having only so much precious time to create and practice didn't deter me, it just made me that much more determined. 

I moved back to Philadelphia in June of 2006, and I was doing some dancing, but nothing really major. I put my choreography out in small showcases, and I was taking class. One night, I was knocking around ideas with Jaye Allison for how to fundraise for her annual Philly Tap Festival, and I said, "how about we make a showcase?" It would be a "teaser" to get people excited for the summer festival.

From February - April of 2008, I casually called all the people I knew, asked them to perform and I planned that first show to go off at the Community Education Center. Tap Teaser 1 premiered on Saturday, April 26, 2008 to a fairly sizable crowd. I wish I could find that first flyer I made or the first program. Well, maybe it's a good thing I can't. My first tries at promotional materials were HORRIBLE! And talk about low-budget: at one point during that show, I tiptoed to the side of the stage so that I could plug in a boom box and play a cassette tape of music for one of the performers. 

I don't even know what encouraged me to keep going after that. It felt like en endeavor that the dancers and the audience enjoyed. At the time, there was no showcase just for tap dancers who wanted to try out work or show a finished piece. I had long felt like Philadelphia needed something to jumpstart our tap dance scene. So, I thought, well, what if we/I do this show twice a year?

So, for the next go-round, I planned Tap Teaser 2 on the weekend of the Phillies World Series parade. Nobody came! But, for whatever reason - stubbornness, stupidity - I went on from there.

From 2008-2014, I put up two shows a year around the city. Most of them were really, really small affairs, but then we'd have a barn-burner crowd, and I'd decide to keep organizing them. In 2010, I added a musician or even a jazz trio in every show, and when I put up the last show in November of 2014, every performer on that stage was performing to live music. I'm still really proud of that.

Show production is extremely hard, thankless and expensive. I put my own money into every one of those shows, and I lost money every single time. I rented the venue, I printed programs, I paid for musicians, I put in countless hours of administrative time sending press releases, organizing dancers, putting out last-minute fires. Besides these shows, I was also producing master classes here and there, and tap jams when I could. 

Why on earth would I do all of this? I love(d) tap dance, Philadelphia, and giving people a chance to collaborate and be on stage. All of this.

But, upon all these many years of reflection, I think that all of this work was my long, convoluted way of finding my artistic voice, while also balancing the demands of motherhood. Since I directed the shows, I was able to try out my ideas in a low-key environment. The experience I gained doing this on my own was invaluable. There was no problem I hadn't encountered and therefore, there was no problem I couldn't handle. For example, in May 2009, I was in early labor with my second daughter, when we put up Tap Teaser 3 at the Painted Bride. I was afraid of moving and breaking my water, so I perched my nine-months pregnant self on a chair at the "front of house" and took tickets, while I texted the saintly Charles Tyson multiple instructions for running the "back of the house." When the last show went up in November 2014, I had just sustained an emergency c-section delivery only 8 weeks earlier, and I still had my stitches.

I loved this dance baby I had created. I had so many great memories. By the time Tap Teaser turned 6, I kept getting hints that it was time to set it free. Thanks to these mini-incubators twice a year, I had artistic ideas of my own that I wanted to produce and I realized that I needed to let this project go, if I really wanted to make those ideas a success. November 2014 was the swan song, and what a swan song it was: standing-room only crowd, killer live band, people dancing in the aisles. It felt like the perfect going-away party.

Then, the universe had other plans. While I was going about my life doing ten thousand things, I had been working with Jane Goldberg and Dorothy Wasserman on a new artistic idea that would allow Dorothy to set some of her choreography on dancers in Philadelphia. In September of 2013, I got an email from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts that I had won the grant! I was really excited about this development, because it seemed to indicate that I was moving in the right direction, away from community organizing, and towards other kinds of concert work. Fast forward a few months into the residency, and Dorothy mentioned that she had this fun, beginner level tap piece that she could possibly teach during one of the community workshops we had planned for the project. The idea kept snowballing, and I think I said, "what if we put that piece in the show, too?" About 20 people from all over Philadelphia signed up for the workshop, practiced the piece, and performed it with live music at my concert "Meet Us At The Corner" in June 2014.

In 2015, I did the same thing. I put out a call for anyone who was interested to learn a piece by my mentor, Heather Cornell, and the work was featured on an episode of Articulate.

In 2016, I finally had my first studio space at 1525 North Bailey Street, and I was able to hold rehearsals whenever I wanted! Max Pollak created a body percussion piece which sounded off the charts at Rittenhouse Soundworks.

In 2017, I put out the call again, and almost 50 people showed up when Ray Hesselink came to my "new" studio at 2511 West Girard Avenue. His appearance and the opening of the new studio snagged me a nice mention in an article in Dance Teacher Magazine.