Photo by Vicky Annand

On 17th February I posted the following on my Facebook status:

Why does it seem dance studios are becoming more selective than inclusive of dance styles? Why is it so difficult to find affordable studio space for tap dance in London? Sprung WOODEN floors please, not vinyl/marley etc. Grrrrr!

Over the next day I received a number of comments from tap dance friends and associates from different cities around the world who have the same issue. Whilst this post is focused on floors specific for tap dance it may also apply to other percussive dance styles.

The issue is that many new/rennovated dance studios lean towards vinyl-type covered dance floors which are not suitable for tap dance. And where they install sprung, wooden floors they are not durable for outdoor shoe wear let alone the battering of metal-plated shoes!

As part of my Trailblazer project I’m conducting research into acquiring a decent, portable, tap dance floor to practice on and for performances. This is partly because I’ve had to turn down gigs due to lack of suitable floor to tap on.

Requirements for tap dance floor

The National Tap Ensemble, an American tap dance company, provide a useful link on their website entitled Appropriate Flooring For Tap Dance.

As stated on their website, the minimum standards required for tap dance floors are:

1 – A TOP LAYER MADE OF HARD WOOD – e.g. oak or maple but not painted, varnished or waxed
2 – HIGH RESILIENCY – i.e. sprung floor (a.k.a. floating or suspended floor)
3 – RESONANCE – at least two inches or five centimeters underneath the top layer of the floor
4 – A CRACK-FREE SURFACE – i.e. no space between boards or any nails, tape or sticky tape residue etc
www.usatap.org/aft.htm

As well as an exhaustive list on surfaces that shouldn’t be tap danced on they also state:

TAP DANCE IN PARTICULAR, SHOULD NEVER BE STUDIED, PRACTICED OR PERFORMED/TAUGHT ON BALLET/MODERN/JAZZ FLOORS
www.usatap.org/aft.htm

This is because the needs and requirements of ballet/jazz/modern flooring are DRASTICALLY different from those of tap/clogging/flamenco and all other percussive dance traditions (Ibid.) So dance floors advertised as being suitable for all styles are dance are merely a marketing strategy that does not reflect the differing requirements for dance styles. Dance professionals need to be aware of their responsibilities to themselves and students to make informed decisions about different dance floors for different dance styles.

Injury

People who tap dance on unsuitable floors may not experience any immediate repercussions beyond the poor resonance of taps, but are at high risk from micro-injuries to their joints. These are small injuries that can build up to major issues over time. I recently caught up with a tap acquaintance who had to retire from tap dancing due to arthritis caused by many years of dancing on “bad” floors, mainly flooring that was too hard. Although the tap dancer used a wood surface it was not sprung and was often laid on very hard surfaces such as marble and concrete. He indicated that he felt pressured to dance on “bad” floors in order to further his career, but now regrets that he hadn’t been more aware of the consequences since he would have been more selective about what surfaces to dance on. He has lived many years in pain, at first dancing through it (not recommended), but it built up to a point where it became so severe it limited his ability to walk. After finally consulting a doctor, the condition of his joints were found to be very serious and surgery was needed to correct some of the damage.

The Dance Floor “Specialists”

So why are many dance studios installing floors that exclude persussive dance styles? I suspect it’s partly due to demand as well as cost. Classic dance halls often had sprung, hardwood floors (good for tap dance, ballroom styles and classic jazz dance style). When cheaper materials became more readily available floor specialists moved away from the old flooring systems which were more expensive to build and maintain.

These days many dance floor specialists provide sprung floor systems that require a vinyl-type layer on top, or soft wood surfaces, all of which are geared towards ballet and contemporary. They are also cheaper to maintain. Percussive dance – tap, flamenco, clogging etc – are not prominent styles in typical dance studios so are not catered for. Hence why there is a lack of dance studio spaces for tap dance.

Common pratice

Many tap dance professionals, companies and enthusiasts find that the only way to ensure they have suitable flooring is build it themselves. Obviously this can be considerably expensive since it often requires a bespoke design and specific materials (real wood is expensive in comparison to soft wood, plywood or masonite). Maple and oak (particularly white oak) seem to be top hardwood choices amongst tap professionals. Portable stages are required for touring companies since they cannot rely on venues having suitable floors to dance on. Tap dance companies can spend thousands of American dollars to ensure they have a well-built tap dance floor, a luxury many individuals, or small companies cannot afford.

Tap dance at large dance events, festivals etc

Dance events aimed at being inclusive of styles often have floors unsuitable to tap dance on. Besides the organisers typically being ignorant towards the requirements of percussive styles, the companies that supply “specialist dance floors” are also just as unknowledgable. Tap dance is often an after-thought in the programming, by which stage the technical requirements cannot be met. Plus even if tap dancers could supply their own floor at dance events it’s not practical if set up time is needed, since each act typically has only 5-15min on stage.

Towards a portable tap dance floor

Whether an occasional or regular tap dancer, any tap dance floor should be more than a piece of MDF board or plywood since these are not hard wood and do not provide a sprung floor system. Practicing on such surface will lead to injuries.

The tap floor should pass the resiliency test – You can easily test this by jumping on the floor or stage while wearing hard soled shoes (note that sneakers won’t work as they will absorb shock and give you the false impression that the floor is resilient) (www.usatap.org/aft.htm)

At dance fairs, I’ve approached dance floor specialist companies for information on their products suitable for tap floors. I’ve also searched online for floors and those that look as if they have potential are often based in the USA (shipping costs to UK could be quite high).

Undesirable options

1) “Tap tiles”, a vinyl surface even though it’s recommended for tap dance practice. The individual tiles don’t provide a sprung floor system

2) Roll out wooden mat
Although this provides a wood surface it does not specify what type of wood (only that it has a Maple like finish) and would require a sprung subfloor.

Currently, I’ve created a spec to have portable, tap dance floor built and am awaiting information of potential, existing floors in the USA before the next stage.

ADAD brought expert Sinead Macmanus on board to lend us Trailblazer’s a helping hand. Sinead began with a virtual meeting (online) to plan for the actual day. It turned out that there were many subjects related to running a dance business that we wanted to cover.

The online meeting proved to be key in setting up the schedule for the day and although the list of subjects for Sinead to cover seemed a bit ambitious, she successfully covered planning, strategy, budgeting and financial management, funding, touring and venues in the session, and allowed time to discuss things at the end. And since the day was rather information intensive Sinead also provided additional resources that would be useful for us mull over in our own time. I still have a few things to chase myself up on but it’s good to know there’s a support system pointing me in the right direction when the time comes.

Now all I need to do is set myself up with a workable system I can maintain to stay on top of the management of projects.

Well now with the support of the Trailblazer Fellowship I’m able to budget and plan for professional development. So when I read the schedule for Heather Cornell’s 20th Anniversary NYC Rhythm Tap Intensive Workshop with live music I was excited that it matches the focus of my project. But then again my project has been inspired by tap dancers I’ve seen on numerous occasions, such as Heather Cornell, Roxane Butterfly and Max Pollak, who have worked closely with musicians for many years. What’s more Heather’s Back to our roots – Jazz intensive is her last and The 20th Anniversary Celebration is for 20 Students only.

Heather Cornell’s Rhythm Tap Intensive you will get the same individual attention that Heather offered her company members and dancers in her professional training program for two decades.

From Manhattan Tap Intensive with Heather Cornell on www.manhattantap.org

Of course I’m now fully signed up for the two weeks in July. And whilst in New York I’ll be using the opportunity to check out the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for tap and jazz research. It will also be great to catch up with old tap buddies and make new contacts, particularly since there’s likely to be a lot of tap visitors in town for the Tap City festival the first week of July. And budget permitting, I might be able to squeeze in a master class or two at Tap City as well!

When I first put my Trailblazer Fellowship proposal together I was a bit concerned about finding musicians I could work with. However late last year, whilst I was wondering about the best way to approach musicians an opportunity came my way.

Michèle Drees began attending the London Tap Jam last summer for tap dance. As it turns out she’s an amazing drummer. And Michele’s so enthusiatic about playing for tap dancer’s she had put together her own trio for that purpose. So when Michèle and I first began to talk we realised we were aiming for very similar goals. Needless to say we’ve teamed up and are currently working on ideas. Watch this space!
To see how we’re getting along come see

Michèle Dress Trio at Women in Jazz Week at Ronnie Scott’s on March 13th.

Ronnie Scott’s
47 Frith Street
Soho
London
W1D 4HT
UK
Reservations: +44 (0)20 7439 0747

Annette Walker be covering for Junior Laniyan’s Rhythm Tap classes at Pineapple Dance Studios from Saturday 9th January until early February 2010.

Every Saturday, 2-3pm (Starts back 9 Jan 2010)

Level: Intermediate-Advanced

Cost: £6 + membership
(See www.pineapple.uk.com for details)

Address:
Pineapple Studios,
7 Langley Street, London,
WC2H 9JA

Tel: +44(0)20 7836 4004

As well as the latest news about me, including the latest on my ADAD Trailblazer Fellowship, there’s a post about my first Glastonbury Festival experience and a summary of my journal for the first part of 2009.

For a full list of all categories see Blog categories in the sidebar on the right.

Today I attended the Service and reception of A Celebration for the Life of James Maddison Clark (23rd July 1922 – 30 October 2009) in Dunstable. The service was held at the gorgeous Priory Church in Dunstable at 12.30pm. Jimmy’s close brother Steve, members of his family, friends and those whose lives he had touched filled the church to attend the service and show their love and support. It was a beautiful and moving service with hymns, prayers, a reading and tributes to Jimmy from his family and members of The Grand Order of Water Rats.

As well as refreshments the reception provided the space for old friends to catch up, new friends to meet. Old memories and stories were shared and new ones created, all under the shadow of Jimmy’s living memory. Steve was sure Jimmy would have been pleased at the proceedings and had a warm and giving smile, though touched by sadness.

Before leaving Dunstable for the 2 hour drive back to London I went, with several tap friends, to visit Jimmy’s grave. We soon realised that it might turn into an impossible task with the fading light and lack of directions. But whilst walking through the cemetary, amongst the many burial sites and plots and having no idea where we needed to go, we somehow found ourselves at Jimmy’s grave. After paying respects we headed back to our cars whilst reflecting on the seemingly miraculous occurence of actually finding Jimmy’s final resting place in the early dark and cold of a November evening.

I plan to use this opportunity for research and development in tap and jazz music practice, and also towards building an independent tap and live music group. This project idea had been floating around in my head for sometime but things started to fall into place when I first sat down and wrote out my plans earlier this year before I found out about the bursary. Writing the proposal helped me to refine the project idea and had already made up my mind that I would make a start even before I had applied.

One of the tasks I assigned myself to compliment my continuing professional development as a tap dancer was to take up playing the piano again so I could expand my jazz musical prowess! Grateful for all those classical piano lessons and grades I did until I was 19 (plus a short introduction to jazz I did back in 2002) I was able to sign up to an Intemediate Blues Piano course at Goldsmiths College.

I’ll be keeping an online journal on the details and progress of my project over the next few months so keep an eye out under the blog sub-category Trailblazer Fellowship. I’ll also be blogging about how the piano lessons are going and the first entry is Blues Piano 29 September – 9 November 2009.

Find out about ADAD’s Trailblazer Fellowship

• Learn several LH (lefthand) walking bassline patterns;
• Learn a different 12-bar blues chorus/tune each week;
• Learn different RH (righthand) chord rhythms for accompaniment;
• Practice improvising.

Now I’m at the stage where I’m expected to not only learn a new tune/chorus each week, but remember the previous ones, add them together, in any order, and improvise around them. It’s not enough to just memorise how to play a new tune or practice simple exercises. When you take into account that I have a choice of nine different LH patterns that have different “grooves” (I don’t need to know all of them but a few), at least four different kinds of rhythms for RH chords that I do need to know, and several types of chords to be familiar with in different “intervals” (e.g. each single chord has at least three different ways it be played plus additional notes)… well you can see how I need to structure my practice sessions quite carefully so I cover everything.

Add to this that in class I might have to play the memorised choruses in any of 3 different keys and be able to demonstrate some form of improvisation and you might begin to understand my frustration of having to drive to my mum’s to practice on my piano since there’s not enough room for it in my flat! I’m looking forward to when I can just roll out of bed and do 1-2 hours of piano practice to start my day.

Despite the lack of frequent practice sessions – I manage a minimum of 2-3 hours a week in 1-2 sessions – I’m doing pretty well in class. I got through my first solo, blues piano demo in class this evening. It wasn’t as good as when I last practiced this afternoon (I’m still a bag of nerves playing in class and lost LH and RH coordination a few times as well as forgetting bits) but it was well received, and the teacher appreciated my attempts to keep the flow of the groove in the LH/bassline even when I totally lost what I was doing in the RH. It’s early days but with more practice I’ll straighten out the kinks.

I can’t believe I had left it so long to return to regularly playing the piano and I’m really enjoying the Blues Piano course. In fact, I’m already thinking about which jazz piano course to continue with in the next academic year, Sept 2010-June 2011. But first I need to make the most of this course. If all goes well I may even venture out to play at a jazz blues jam in London!

I’m always open to new ideas so when London-based poet, writer, producer and DJ Charlie Dark contacted me in May 2009 to find out if I’d be interested in taking a part in a performance based on experimental collaborations at The Albany in October I accepted the offer. At first there was speculation that I would collaborate with a poet (my partner happens to be a poet) but when it turned out that my partner was not available I suggested to Charlie that I could work with a musician.

Within a few weeks Charlie called me back to let me know he had found a great drummer for with me – Soliheen. It was only after the conversation had ended that I realised I had no idea what kind of performance to do with just tap and a drummer. So this was a new challenge for me and I was a little nervous.

Now Charlie was happy for Soliheen and I to jam on the night of the event and see what happened but I wanted to have a session before the event. So the evening before the Word Sound Power event I met Soliheen for the first time. (The world is small and it turns out that not only had Soliheen worked with my partner several years ago but that he is going out with a friend of mine so he knew a little about me.)

The Albany technician was great in setting up a the tap performance area for me and Soliheen’s kit all set we were ready to jam. After a quick call to Charlie to check a few details I realised I had a 30 minute set (it seemed I had forgotten this small detail), so I worked with Soliheen for a couple of hours in the studio at The Albany to develop some ideas. By the end of the evening I had a rough idea of what we would do but since it was a jam there was nothing set in stone – I had rough idea on how to start the jam but decided to trust our instincts on how it would develop on the night!

Well the event was finally upon us and despite my calm exterior I was extremely nervous. It was the longest set I had ever done with the smallest number of performers – just 2. But the beauty about improvisation is that you never know what’s going to happen. It’s about the risk. At first I was certain that we couldn’t fill 30 minutes and keep it interesting – for ourselves or the audience – but on the contrary it was quite the opposite. In fact I had told Charlie we only had about 20min and so the plan was to include a Q&A after our peformance.

As it turned out the jam went really well for both myself and Soliheen and I was relieved to find the audience had also enjoyed it. In fact it went so well I had Albany staff telling me how they’d heard good things about it when I visited the venue for another event a week later – and that was by people who hadn’t seen it!

Obviously not all experiements have happy endings but when you have good people to work with the odds are higher. So thanks to Charlie for the great opportunity, and to Soliheen for his hardwork, patience and great drumming.