JEANNE TEACHES DANCE

"Do you tap?"  "No."  I can feel the regret sink to the bottom of my throat every time I'm asked.  Oh sure, I've faked it--pretty well, I might add--and on a professional stage!  It's not that I didn't like tap dance as a kid or even that I wasn't exposed to it.  Quite the opposite--my mother made sure I owned, or had at least seen every single Shirley Temple movie in existence by the time I was six years old, and I complied quite happily.  To this day, some of those song and dance numbers come back to haunt me with a classic nostalgia and I find myself looking them up on YouTube for a trip down memory lane--and sometimes just to marvel at the musical genius of songs that, for whatever reason, seem to have faded into obscurity. It's not that I wasn't exposed to any contemporary tap dancers either--the late Gregory Hines would often rehearse at my home studio when he visited L.A., and while we couldn't always see the rehearsals, my f

Music has always been one of the most influential components of my dancing.  It influenced my movement long before my mother enrolled me in my first ballet-tap combo class down the street from my house.  I consider musicality to be every bit as important as good technique and, possibly, more important than natural ability.  Due to my involvement in soccer and art classes as a kid, my initial exposure to dance was limited: I pretty much studied ballet and jazz only from the time I was seven until age eleven.  Admittedly, I loathed the occasional modern class we were assigned to take during our summers at ballet school and regarded our polynesian, tap and folk dance classes as mere diversion--I was, after all, a "serious" dance student and in my young mind had stubbornly decided that ballet was the only "serious" dance one could study. At age eleven, we began to have Russian character dance classes, which I quickly learned were a "must" for anyone conside

Knowing when your shoes have expired is just as important as having them fitted correctly and using proper dance technique.  Lacking in any one of these areas can make a dancer more prone to injury, which is the last thing a new pointe student wants.  Shoes are not made to last forever, so be sure to keep a close watch on the structure of your shoe and if your teacher advises you that the shoe is starting to break down, make plans to take a trip to get a new pair.

This past weekend we brought some tango dancing friends up into Mill Valley for the annual Kinderfest put on by the Nature Friends Tourist Club of San Francisco .  My mother's side of the family has German roots and so my first exposure to dance was actually to my Great-Grandfather's polka music, back in Nekoosa, Wiscosin.  We traded in our stilettos for hiking shoes and made the trek into Muir Woods for a delightful afternoon of good lagers and hefeweizens,  Bratwürste  and Polish W ürste , and walzers and polkas to live music.  Dance (especially when combined with good German beer) really has an incredible ability to melt away inhibitions--it was wonderful to watch my friends, who normally would have shied away from joining into a dance style they didn't know, attempting to polka with such gumption!  If you like Oktoberfest, and you like hiking in the outdoors, I highly recommend visiting the Tourist Club for this, or one of their other festivals, held in the spring and

Coming this Fall to Three Stages at Folsom Lake College, you won't want to miss this passionate dance tribute to the life of singer/songwriter Johnny Cash.  Presented by E:motion Dance Ensemble with choreography by Sunny Staton Mitchell. SHOW DATES Friday, November 30, 8pm Saturday, December 1, 8pm Thursday, December 6, 8pm Friday, December 7, 8pm Saturday, December 8, 2pm Saturday, December 8, 8pm TICKETS General Admission $22 (916) 608-6888 www.threestages.net Sponsored in part by:  

Always creating whimsical musical patters and sweeping lines, the imitable Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...