Last post

Well this is going to be my last blog post. I enjoyed doing this project but sometimes it was hard to come up with what to write about. I signed up to take a tap class next semester here at school and I am very excited about it! Tap dancing is probably one of the least recognized types of dance but I think it is the coolest and most interestig type because your making all the noises yourself and you do not even need to use music which is another plus. I do not know what else to say besides I really love to tap [: <3

Tap dancing videos

These are some videos on how to do some basic tap dancing.

Famous tap dancers

Here are some links to a couple famous tap dancers biographies.

Michael Flatley

Sammy Davis Jr.

Bunny Briggs

Gregory Hines

My dance studio

I danced at Amber's house of dance in Burlington, NC for 6 years. Starting from seventh grade all the way up untill 12th grade. I didn't really like it because they treated me as if I was a horrible dancer but yet I was doing it alot longer than most of the girls at the studio who tapped. I was stuck in the same average level for all 6 years that I was there, they told me I wasn't good enough to be in the advanced tap class but I knew that I was. I was always the oldest and tallest girl in the class and every year a couple of girls who were in my class got moved up but I never did and I hated it. I almost quit but, I love tap so much that I just sucked it up and dealt with it.

Tap dancing has a wide range of terminology with such expressions as "spank, buffalo, and etc". Tap also contans movements made popular in Swing and Lindy Hop. It has the rolling glide from the Waltz and the Foxtrot. Basically it is a mixture of everything.

The most famous tap steps then and now are the shuffle, ball change, flap, brush, and cramp roll. The cramp roll is when you make four sounds by jumping in the air and slapping your right ball, let ball, right heel and left heel all at the same time. The tiem step is a Shim Sham tap routine taught in most tap classes. The American style of tap is very jazzy.

The beginning of my dance career.

I have done tap dancing for 14 years of my life. I love it and most of the reason is because I'm actually really good at it. I started dancing at a dance studio when  was 4 years old. I started off doing ballet. My first year of dance when I did ballet it was like a combination class of ballet/tap which meant that half of our dance was ballet and half of the dance was tap. We had to change into our tap shoes on stage. I remember it clear as day because I was only 3 and I had no idea how to tie my own shoes so i was really scared of changing shoes on stage in front of everybody. Our costumes were really neat because we had rain jackets and unbrellas. The song that we danced to was Singing in the rain (very fitting huh?). After that year I realized that I didn't want to do ballet but that I wanted to do tap. So I've stuck with it ever since.