I opened youtube for a song for you guys but this was in my recommended vids.
I promise you will thoroughly enjoy it
a) this is from the second riverdance special, which illustrated how far-flung similar styles/influences were (specifically with a celtic focus but the same points could be made about a lot of backgrounds)
b) i identified that based on the preview still & confirmed it within 2 actual factual seconds of the video because you bet your ass i had (still have) this shit on vhs.
God, this is fascinating to me. There are several things I adore, and two of them are in this video: comparative music and comparative dance.
I honestly wish I knew more about tap. I learnt it as an extremely white kid in Australia, so I’m fairly disconnected from its history. I know it’s got strongly black roots, but I also suspect that it has some small roots in English step dancing via Appalachia, since I have learnt both various forms of English step dancing/clog dancing and Appalachian step dancing, and there’s steps common to all three. But since I don’t know West African dancing of any type, I can’t look at any part of tap and recognise commonalities to African dancing (although I understand that African rhythm is a strong part of what makes both jazz and tap the art forms that they are). I JUST WISH I KNEW MORE.
Also? Why did no-one teach me to stand on my toes as a tap dancer? That’s shit I know better from ballet. Like that guy looks like he does chaines turns?? On taps???? (yes I had to look up what they were called bc it’s been twenty years since I was last in a ballet class. doesn’t mean I couldn’t do them if you asked me to) IS THAT STANDARD TAP SHIT OR IS THAT SOMETHING THAT DUDE DOES BC HE’S AWESOME, I NEED TO KNOW.
Also, as someone who also plays for dancers, I might’ve loled at about the four-minute mark where the tap saxophonist and the Irish fiddler are having A Moment, and all the dancers are standing around going ‘I feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?’ TOO REAL.
Also, at about the five-minute mark, where the accompaniment goes away and it’s just the rhythm of the steps? I am weak. I adore percussive dance so much, which you might’ve guessed from the fact that I have learnt multiple styles. FOOT PERCUSSION, MY FRIENDS. And as someone who has danced with tap shoes and with (English) clogs, getting your shoes/taps to ring that clearly when your steps are that fast is A Skill. It’s very easy to make noise with taps. That’s not enough to be a good dancer. Getting the taps to ring clearly instead of thudding is the real trick.
Incredible video about a young Indonesia ballerina named Rebecca Hadibroto, who has won the Young America Grand Prix award (a very important award in the ballet award). The video has English subtitles.
“For Downey, who trained long ago as a ballet dancer and still moves like one — arched spine, squared shoulders, feet planted but lightly planted, neck straight, chin raised — even thinking is a physical activity.”
If you’ve not seen RDJ in Chaplin, I really must recommend it. It really exhibits the best of his physicality. There’s a moment in it where he pulls a ballet move, which James Lipton would later nearly faint over in an interview with Robert Downey Jr. Apparently ballet really excites James Lipton. (The interview is Inside the Actors Studio if you’re at all interested.)
wupacing 