Rhythm Tap Teacher Online Workshops
Online workshops open to all Tap Dance Teachers. Join us for rhythm tap enrichment and new teaching ideas to bring to your tap students. Workshops include a sampling of Copasetic Curriculum: classic tap material, jazz music concepts, composition skills to create your own exercises and student dances, tap history, and rhythm tap pedagogy for all ages and levels. Workshops will meet by zoom and yes, we’ll be dancing! so wear tap shoes and have a minimum 4’x4’ dance space, if possible. Recommended for Intermediate and Advanced tap dancers who teach.
Lead by Margaret Morrison with Guest Faculty
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
ATDF Tap Teacher Info-Hour
Wednesday, May 4, 2022 (12:30-1:30pm) EST
Join us for FREE sessions packed with terrific ideas for Rhythm Tap Teaching and an Intro to the ATDF Online Tap Teacher Training.
FREE on Zoom, pre-registration required.
Visit registration. A link invitation will then be sent to you one hour before the session begins.
We'll cover:
Fun and solid tap technique for your beginning students
Time Steps & Tap Heritage: create sophisticated and simple building blocks
Jazz music concepts & expert advice for tap teaching challenges
An introduction to the Copasetic Curriculum and the ATDF Online Tap Teacher Training Certificate Program, July 11-17, 2022: a comprehensive approach to all levels of rhythm tap teaching, available to teachers across the globe.
ARCHIVED SESSIONS
Monday, November 16, 2020
Time Steps and Traditional Jazz Structures
With Margaret Morrison and Susan Hebach
Time Steps, those foundational units of traditional and contemporary tap choreography, can unlock a treasure trove of material for tap teachers. We’ll explore dynamic 2-bar and 4-bar phrases and how to use them to teach your students solid technique, rhythm concepts, tap dance history, and more. We’ll talk about making good music choices so that your choreography can guide your students to deeper tap dance expertise. You’ll learn approaches for all levels of students (age 6 to adult) and compositional tools so that you can create your own rhythmically sophisticated time steps to build into fun exercises and exciting dances.
**COULDN'T MAKE IT? RECORDED SESSION AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD!
PURCHASE HERE
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Monday, December 7, 2020
Jazz Tap Chorus Styles of the 1910s & 1920s
With Lisa La Touche and Margaret Morrison
Lisa La Touche and Margaret Morrison lead a dance and history session on the dancing women of early jazz. The African-American chorus dancers of Shuffle Along (1921) and the Whitman Sisters’ Troupe (1900-1930s), stars like Florence Mills and Alice Whitman defined full-bodied, jazz-immersed, rhythmic and movement styles that spurred the evolution of tap and theater dancing. Margaret and Lisa share histories of a few of the unsung, modern women who launched the explosion of 20th century tap and jazz dance. Lisa leads the class in her reinterpretations of chorus tap choreography of the era and she’ll share her first-hand experience performing in the re-staging of Shuffle Along on Broadway. We’ll address ways you can bring these embodied tap and jazz styles into your tap teaching. Workshop is geared towards tap teachers. The dance segment will be on an Intermediate/Advanced tap level. Students should wear tap shoes and have a dance space to work in.
**COULDN'T MAKE IT? RECORDED SESSION AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD!
PURCHASE HERE
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Monday, January 11, 2021 (12:00-2:00 EST)
Flash! Rhythm Tap Technique for Pull Backs, Wings, Slides, and Trenches
With Dexter Jones and Margaret Morrison
Dexter Jones and Margaret Morrison lead a dance and history session for teachers on the technique of hitting tap’s most most exciting steps: flash material of pull backs, wings, slides, trenches (and over the tops, if we have time). Dexter will lead exercises and specific techniques to pass these essential, classic skills on to your students, and he’ll speak of his Broadway and performing experience with choreographers who have specialized in flash. Margaret will address how to start your very beginners with hop shuffling steps that get them ready for flash at higher levels. She’ll present videos and tap history that you can share with students. Flash emerged from the very earliest African-American Buck and Wing dancing at the turn of the 20th century and has a featured role in one of our oldest dances, the BS Chorus. Flash tap took the dance world by storm in the 1930s and 40s as tap dancers, like the Nicholas Brothers or the Miller Brothers and Lois, sought new heights of excellence to express the soaring horn lines of big band jazz.
Workshop is geared towards tap teachers. The dance segment will be for Intermediate/Advanced tap dancers. Students should wear tap shoes and have a dance space to work in.
**COULDN'T MAKE IT? RECORDED SESSION AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD!
PURCHASE HERE
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Monday, March 15, 2021 (12:00-2:00 EST)
Jazz Music Fundamentals for Tap Teachers
With Susan Hebach and Jess Jurkovic (Jazz Pianist)
Susan and guest pianist Jess Jurkovic will share jazz music foundational concepts that all tap teachers need to understand to effectively use jazz in the classroom. We will discuss basic jazz music terminology and common forms of jazz construction such as 32 bar chorus, 12 bar blues chorus, and other simple variations. Session includes live piano accompaniment by Jess who will add into the conversation from a musician’s point of view. Susan will illustrate how knowledge of these concepts apply to dances of the Copasetic Canon, traditional 8 bar steps, and how using these concepts in teaching tap can expand your students’ music sensibility. We will explore how to listen and map out what you are hearing in the music, such as introductions, stop time, comping, double time feel, vamps, etc. We will share constructive tips for teaching and ideas on how to create simple arrangements to work with a musician or live band with your students.
Workshop is geared towards tap teachers and all tap dancers are welcome. Please do bring your ears and jazz music questions. We may do some light dancing, referencing the Copasetic Canon (Shim Sham & Coles Stroll, etc.)
Monday, March 28, 2022 (12 - 1pm) EDT
Thursday, April 7, 2022 (12 - 1pm) EDT