Top Hat Tap Dance

Top Hat Tap Dance, originally uploaded by maryjanes856.

I can't believe that I didn't write a post about the tap class I took with my friend Ali! Better late than never, so I thought I'd do a quick post.

Those who know me might remember that I've always had a love affair with tap dancing. For a short time during college I danced with a small outfit called the Shim Sham Shufflers.

Back in those days I was taking a tap class with my roommate Gina through one of the community ed programs. We'd practice our shuffle ball changes in an empty classroom over at Roosevelt High School and fancied ourselves to be the next Ginger Rogers.

My friend Ali caught wind that I had tapped before and asked me if I would be interested in doing a class with her. I thought it sounded like a fantastic idea and we both signed up for lessons at the City Academy school of dance. Ali had taken the beginners course there before and reckoned that with our experience that we should be ready for the intermediate class.

I remember that first night. Ali and I had met up at the Castle pub, just outside of Farringdon station. Our class started at 8 p.m. so we had plenty of time to catch up over a drink or bottle of wine to be more accurate. We polished off our bottle and headed off.

We arrived at the beautiful Finsbury Town Hall, on time for our class. Full of enthusiasm if not a bit tipsy. Ok, maybe a bit more than tipsy. The class just kind off began. With no real instruction. The teacher turned on the music and the class just started dancing. What a minute!? What happened to the shuffle ball changes? We were doing triple time steps along with a series of other steps that I didn't even know the names of.

Not only I was not able to keep up I ended up just kind of moving my feet around to make it look like I was dancing! It was crazy. The class was unbelievably difficult, way beyond my abilities. Ali was a bit better off, but not by much. It was just so comical. Especially when the teacher made us demonstrate the steps in front of the class!

I tried my best, but I am sure I made a real dogs dinner of it! We kept going to the intermediate class until I decided that perhaps we were maybe a bit out of our depth. I suggest to Ali that perhaps we should swallow our pride and move down to the beginners course. Thankfully Ali is a lovely and reasonable girl and we ended up going to the 6:30 p.m. class, which left us plenty of time to explore all the fantastic restaurants along Exmouth Market.

10 weeks later and we had perfected some steps and had a lot of fun. We've decided to give Bollywood dancing a go for the next session. I will keep you all posted.

Here's a list of some the places we went for food and wine.

The Eagle

Little Bay

Dollar Grill & Martini

Moro

The Castle