Members of Taps have different ideas about their art

Ten years ago, most members of Taps were shuffling off to Buffalo in dance class recitals to the tune of "How much is that doggie in the window?" They looked up to tap dancers like Shirley Temple and Gene Kelly--feel-good performers with a smile on their face and a spring in their step. But today, as they rehearse for their first performance this year, the 23 members of Taps, Yale's only exclusively tap dance group, have quite different ideas about their art.

"Growing up, all the dancing we did was to music," Melissa Tepe, SY '99, said. Tepe, who just joined the group this year, has been tap dancing for 14 years. She recalls with a smile the conventional choreography to which she grew accustomed. "We had to use our arms and do all those `ooohs and ahhhs,' all the cutesy stuff." But now, she said, tap dancing is becoming more dynamic.

This transformation of tap dance began in Harlem, where dancers like Sandman and Jimmy Slide, who began rhythm tap, influenced modern tap icon Gregory Hines. Hines, who created roles such as Jelly Roll Morton in Broadway's Tony Award-winning musical Jelly's Last Jam, can be credited with catapulting tap dance into popular consciousness. On tour, Hines draws international acclaim for his phenomenal improvisational abilities.

But it is Hines's prodigy, Savion Glover, who truly embodies the modern tap movement. Glover's current project, Broadway's Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, breaks all of the formalities associated with the art of tap. Solid rhythm is the keystone and improvisation is the vital decoration. Glover incorporates segments of pure rhythm: two professional drummers have pots and pans tied to their bodies and literally play each other while they dance around to their own beat. Kick-lines and jazz hands are replaced by soulful stomping and emotive pulsations of beat.

It is from this vein of cutting-edge, gritty dance, that Taps emerges. "We attempt to be experimental with rhythm," Lynda Vrooman, BK '97, said. Vrooman co-founded Taps last year along with Andrew Kuklewicz, SY '97, and Tricia Reixach, SM '97. The three dancers were frustrated by the fact that there were no outlets for experimental tap at Yale. "You couldn't really do anything exciting; it would have had to be very traditional," Vrooman said. They held auditions and found that interest was much larger than they had imagined.

For prospective tappers, the familiar atmosphere of the audition was a welcome change. "I liked that it was so relaxed; I didn't feel any pressure," Tepe said. "Usually when you go into these big auditions you get a number and stand in line. [At the Taps audition] they learned all our names."

Taps is committed to a focus on individual choreography and inventiveness. "During rehearsal we come up with all sorts of creative stuff to do," Kelly Burns, BK '99, said. Some of these innovations include tap dancing in water, dancing on their hands, hip-hop tap, ballet tap, tap with jump ropes, minimalist tap, and even erotic tap. "It's pretty much anything goes," Burns said.

Vrooman and her co-founders envisioned a production that would depart from the format of a few non-cohesive skits. They were looking to produce a show with continuity between numbers, one that would "run continuously with very few breaks," Vrooman said.

This weekend's production will be a working paradigm of these visions; the show flows from number to number with little ado. Because of this, the dancers have spent a lot of time and creative energy coming up with witty transitions, like tying their feet together and trying to tap, ballet interludes, or singing an impromptu version of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way."

Tappers dance to everything from Ani DiFranco, to rap, to pure silence. There's not much that this show doesn't do. "For awhile we had a no Harry Connick, Jr., rule," Kuklewicz said. For the most part, the music is the rhythm of their feet.

The majority of the numbers emphasize the individual's interpretation of the rhythm over the aesthetic synchronization of the whole. This is not to say that group numbers are never synchronized, but, for the most part, it seems the individual dancer has the highest priority. In a group number to Ani DiFranco's "How Have You Been?" Tepe dances front and center, stomping hard and fast to DiFranco's passion, as if she were Ani herself. The choreography tells the story, but it is her feet and intensity that convey the requisite feeling.

Improvisation also plays a key role in Taps. Kuklewicz, who has been dancing since he was seven years old, often improvises his solos. According to Kuklewicz, it takes a certain kind of intuition as well as a sense of adventure to pull off successful improvisation. "It's good to have something to start out with, like a rhythm in your head," he said. But often rehearsed choreography just can't make up for spontaneous composition. "There's stuff you can do sometimes that you just can't choreograph. You can do it, but if you plan it, you can't," Kuklewicz said.

For many members of Taps, the most enjoyable part is working one-on-one with peers to come up with new choreography. "It's cool to be teaching people one day and the next day going to dance with them," Burns said. One of the things that makes Taps work so well with such eclectic material are the individual strengths of each of its dancers. "Tap dance is very different depending on where you come from, so we all bring different kinds of dance to the group," Burns said.

The opportunity to choreograph is one of the biggest draws to the new tap group. "It's really expanded the definition of tap for me," Vrooman said.

This new definition stems from the ability to break away from the static choreography most of the dancers were accustomed to before coming to Yale. When they auditioned for Taps, the dancers bid a fond good riddance to the days of one dance teacher developing 20 similar numbers for yearly tap dancing recital. Burns remembered that when she was younger, she used to wish she could create numbers on her own terms. "I finally get to pick a piece of music and choreograph it myself," she said.

Even the title of this semester's performance--`Taps: Break the Floor' suggests an intensity that, until recently, has been absent in tap dance. Like many popular artistic expressions, tap dancing experienced a lull in the decades following World War II, a time of strict adherence to outdated steps and modes of expression. However, the excitement surrounding the current revitalization of tap dancing has paved the way for the success of grass roots dance troupes like Taps. Or, perhaps, it was these small groups who did the paving.