I am ten minutes late to my inaugural tap dancing class. The going is tough, but I struggle on. Five inches of rubber platform separate heel from rainy pavement, and my left ankle gives the occasional tetchy twinge when reminded of the agonising, nauseating pain felt when I last fell off said rubber platform. As the old adage goes, footwear appropriate to swaying lamely on a club dancefloor will not necessarily be at home or indeed welcome in a tap dancing class. Boots built to accessorise a statement crop top are not guaranteed to complement ‘riffing’, ‘shuffles’, a cheesy grin or a sparkly cane. Tap is looking increasingly unlikely.
A quick phone call later and I have procured a pair of tap shoes from an unsuspecting fresher. I trip happily across the quad, my ears ringing with the twinklings of metal on stone and a confident, . Memories flood back, of dolefully pounding out ‘Heart and Soul’ in talent shows in the wake of smug nine-year olds in spangled top hats. It is clear now that I am a diamond in the rough, the Eliza Doolittle of the tap dancing world. All I need is a bath and someone to teach my toes to pronounce the letter ‘h’.
I encounter an acquaintance and hastily stifle my chirpy tinkles, manoeuvring my feet onto their sides and crabbing diagonally into the shadows. The sudden change in direction brings the fact that the shoes are in fact three sizes too large crashing home. Each foot is a lone baked bean in a long-forgotten can, rattling from side to side and occasionally attempting to break free. Apprehension courses through me I envisage one shoe shooting across the room after a particularly enthusiastic shuffle step.
But my discomfort is short-lived. Once I enter the tap class, anything goes. Soon we are clicking toe to heel to twist to slide and back two three four like a horde of antsy crickets, inserting arbitrary hand gestures to distract potential spectators from the mal-coordinated mess of our feet.
Led by the effusive Ed Addison and accompanied by a breathless Britney Spears, it soon becomes clear that Ed is right – tap is a lot less rubbish when someone other than Bruce Forsyth is doing it. I joyously discover that I can do the steps, but I seem to be inhibited by some sort of muscle amnesia. Every new step is all-encompassing: it takes every ounce of concentration to grasp its complexity, thereby effacing the previous step. I am a goldfish in tap shoes. It’s okay though; I can maintain the façade, blindly following every step half a beat behind. Then the death knell: ‘Ok guys, so I’m going to stand still for the moment, and I’ll watch you do what we’ve just learnt’. Face red, eyes down, I throw the half-remembered scraps of routine to the wind, resorting to a crude marrying of Irish jig and Macarena.
I know I’m terrible, but I almost manage to fool myself. I feel like I’m actually tap dancing just because my feet are making the right noises. My toes tap tap tap away, my heels blithely go left instead of right, forward instead of back. But that is the beauty of (extremely) amateur tap: even if you do absolutely everything wrong, the noise of fifteen people clicking their feet against a hardwood floor in perfect time is incredibly satisfying. Even as I type I maintain a jaunty rhythm of finger to keyboard- if you’ve ever stopped writing in a lecture and sat back to imagine just how delicious it would be if the skittish, fitful tapping of keys streamlined into a rhythmic and vigorous 3/4, then tap can help you realise all you rhythmic fantasies.
