tap dancing

A most exciting development occurred at Monday night’s Tap Dancing Class.

A new girl joined!

Do you appreciate what that means? It means that I am no longer the new girl! I’m not the least experienced. I’m not the most lost!

It came alive for me when we started doing warm up drills and I was in the “you girls keep going” group – not Miss Abbie’s “let me walk you through that in slow motion” group.

Looking across at the deer in the headlights expression on the new girl’s face I was awash with empathy. I know that feeling, I know that fear!

But the second wave of feeling was the growing realisation that I had advanced in my own skills – not just when compared to the new girl – in and of myself. I could do the drills that Miss Abbie was giving us. I could look ahead at where I was going not just down at my feet (to check if they were doing the right thing, you can never be too sure!) I was able to go fast enough to work up a sweat and feel the strain in my muscles. The clickety clack of my taps were vaguely rhythmical and consistent.

Yay for development! Yay for progress!

We went on to practising the routine and, although happy with my recall and general ability to keep up, there were still those parts that I haven’t quite got right yet. And we’re not even half way through the song, there is still much more choreography to learn, remember and master. But it was a nice little moment to pause and reflect on how far I’ve come.

There’s this week’s encouragement from my tapping adventures. Pause a moment. Take a quieting breath. Look around. There still might be lots to learn and more to improve – but look how far you’ve come! Don’t compare yourself to anyone else, just compare you then to you now – you last week, you a year ago; you this morning.

Philippians 1:6 He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it.

Happy tapping! 🙂

So I did it! I completed my first ever tap class!

I encountered an early set back when the tap shoes I ordered online arrived and were the wrong size! They were too small.

But they’re so pretty!!!!

So I had to do my first class in my good old sneakers. Clearly, anything that I got wrong was because of my inferior footwear and not at all correlated with my skill level! It was nice to have that excuse squared away early.

Miss Abbie is the teacher. She is excellent. She said lots of dance-y words and made us repeat them because then we will remember them and then we will know what they mean and do them and then we will be doing them and that is the goal.

Mostly what you do is flap, brush, hitch and drag and then hop, skip & jump. Oh wait, no, not the last bit. Although if you do that with a little shuffle in the middle you may just get away with looking like you know what you’re doing.

Early learning – just because you say it out loud doesn’t mean your feet will do it. But that didn’t stop me saying it out loud – perhaps too loud – and louder the less my feet were actually responding (maybe they just couldn’t hear me?).

Silly sneakers. I’m sure the tap shoes will work better.

kimberly smith

a lesson from tap dancing lessons

let’s start at the very beginning