Happy National Tap Dance Day! In honor of the national dance holiday, we bring you a peek at the opening number of our recent production of 42ND STREET, directed by Michael Matthew Ferrell and ran April 21-May 8, 2016.
I wish I could dance like that, but why did they start one beat late? I`ve seen vids of other amateurs doing this too in this routine. I wonder if their teacher got the choreography wrong, or didn`t notice these guys learned it wrong, or didn`t care, or just preferred it this way, or perhaps had to settle for the fact that the kids couldn`t actually do it the right way, or whether this was a one-off accident during this video performance. Fascinating! Ian Marshall [Cornwall]
Good eye / ear! This is VERY closely adapted from Gower Champion's original Broadway choreography, but starting those time steps on 1 (instead of 8) is clearly intentional, as by the time they make it to the rolling shuffles (a Champion holdover, albeit with different arms), they're right in time with the original choreo. I've seen countless near-adaptations over the years -- most famously from Randy Skinner -- but I've yet to see anything that I like more than all the original pulled-up elegance of Mr. Champion's style.
