Indulge the 5-year-old within and become a tap dancer already.
Only difference? You’re no longer 5, and now you can do it in a bar.
Presenting
the advent of . . . Tappy Hour. “I realized I wanted to do something
nontraditional besides adult tap dance,” says Dana Fisch, founder and
artistic director of the Undertoe Dance Project and the mastermind
behind Tappy Hour, a class for the nondancer at Jimmy’s No. 43 in the
East Village.
The tapping revelry resumes on Jan. 7, with updates at
danafisch.com. On Feb. 28, the company celebrates its two-year anniversary.
“Dance
has such a stigma,” says Fisch, who’s been soft-shoeing since she was
5, when she saw the movie “Annie” and begged her parents to pay for
lessons.
“People just assume they’re not going to like dance, that they’ll be bored.”
Far
from it. If you’re lucky, you’ll channel your inner Gene Kelly and
Savion Glover. If you’re unlucky, you’ll wipe out. “One of my best
friends totally bit it,” says Tappy Hour aficionado Susan Cohen, 29.
“But it’s fun to make mistakes and look silly and follow the music. It’s a calming feeling.”
Coming
in work attire, most Tappy Hour participants don’t have much knowledge
of tap, but as long as participants aren’t outfitted in spike
stilettos, Fisch says, you can use your dress shoe to imitate the
rhythm of actual taps.
“What happens is you end
up tapping out a melody,” Fisch says. “We call it ‘speaking to each
other’ — you’re singing a song. So you aren’t necessarily just thinking
about the steps, and oh, I need to put my toe down, but it’s
‘dah-dah-dah-dah.’ We’ll do ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ and then
a Lady Gaga song.”
Mostly what it comes down to, Fisch says, are unfulfilled dreams.
“There
are a lot of people my age, like I just turned 30,” she says, “and
maybe they want to explore a lot of things that they’ve always wanted
to do. It’s not just for the elitist, snobby-type people. It’s to get
people excited about the world of dance.”
Updated: Tue., Jan. 5, 2010, 11:07 AM