You can take the boy off the dance floor, but he'll only find another one

I’ve always had a fascination with tap dancing going back to my earliest days watching dancers glide across our family’s 12-inch television screen. But I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to become a tap dancer. I probably should make clear what I refer to as tap dancing was really nothing more than an impromptu shuffle making a noise not much different than a shelf of Thom McCann shoes falling off the rack at a K-Mart. Nevertheless, I do remember taking whatever opportunity, whenever and wherever that opportunity arose, to put my talents or lack of on display.

I think it had something to do with the casual, devil-may-care, go-where-you-wanna-go, do-what-you-wanna-do approach that seemed to guide every tap dancer I ever watched perform. I now know I was only watching a charade, a showman’s deceit being perpetrated on a very sheltered and not so streetwise kid.

Real tap dancers, good tap dancers, real good tap dancers aren’t ad-libbing it. They know exactly what they are doing—just as real good banjo players know exactly what they are doing. Every step is planned, every move measured, every tap deliberate. It may look like they’re making it up on the fly but they’re not.

They couldn’t make it up as they go and still make it look spontaneous. But try telling that to a ten-year old kid watching Sammy Davis Jr. or Gene Kelly dance across the stage of the Ed Sullivan Show or up some stairs or atop some bar on a movie set.

Not that I shouldn’t have known better. I was probably in second or third grade when mom signed my sister and me up for dancing lessons. I quickly learned that there was in fact rhyme and reason in what appeared to be rough and reckless.

With our instructor’s encouragement I attempted the intricate heel, step, heel, step   and drop, toe, drop, toe, drop, toe, drop routines until at some point I decided I didn’t like tap dancing after all.