Translation of "Getting to Know Felipe Galganni"

by Nicole Harris 

Last year we interviewed tap dancer Felipe Galganni.  I thought we would re-share his interview with you but this time in his native language.  You can find the English version of this interview here.  I also strongly recommend you check out this beautiful piece of choreography!  Thank you, Felipe, for providing the translation!

 NH: Quem são seus coreógrafos favoritos ( sapateado e outros estilos)?
FG: Chikako Iwahori, Brenda Bufalino, Max Pollak, Lynn Schwab, Michelle Dorrance. Eu também adoro o Bob Fosse.

NH: O contato com Heather Cornell teve uma grande influência na sua vida. Como a dança dela se comunicou com o seu trabalho?
FG: Tive o primeiro contato com a Heather num workshop no Rio de Janeiro em 2010. A cidade de São Paulo não é um local onde temos muitas aulas com estrangeiros, por isso eu aproveitava todas as oportunidades que surgiam.

Eu me apaixonei quando conheci a Heather. Sua doçura, sua humildade e o jeito com que ela ensina sapateado e música me inspiraram para realizar um curso intensivo de verão em NY. Dois meses antes de viajar, decidi vender meu carro e me mudar para os EUA. E desde então, estou aqui.

NH: Você cresceu estudando outras modalidades de dança além do sapateado americano. Você continua fazendo essas outras aulas? Você sente que ter estudado outros estilos de dança colaborou com seu sapateado?
FG: Eu cresci vendo e dançando samba como a maioria dos brasileiros. Estudei jazz, sapateado, ballet e contemporâneo. Nunca fui um grande bailarino, mas a dança me ajudou a desenvolver habilidades básicas, como os giros e o equilíbrio. Além disso, me ajudou a considerar meu corpo como um todo no sapateado, e não só os pés.

NH:  Recentemente, você me contou a história sobre o seu primeiro par de sapatos e sua primeira aula de sapateado. Você pode dividir essa história com a gente?
FG: Claro! Quando eu tinha 14 anos ganhei um dinheiro de presente de aniversário da minha família e decidi comprar meu primeiro sapato. Eu "praticava" em casa e até fiz uma performance na escola, mesmo sem nunca ter feito uma aula.

Então, quando eu tinha quinze anos, finalmente encontrei uma escola de dança que tinha sapateado na grade. Eu me lembro que não era muito barato, mas meus pais apoiaram a minha vontade.

Quando cheguei na aula a professora me perguntou se eu já havia sapateado antes. Eu disse que sim, e ela me pediu se eu poderia mostrar meu passo favorito. Fiz um estilo único de dança, que até hoje não me lembro o que foi, mas sapateei (risos). Anos depois ela me lembrou deste fato e rimos muito. Seu nome é Valeria Petroni, e ela foi uma excelente professora nos meus primeiros anos de sapateado. Sou muito grato por ter aprendido tanto com ela.

NH: Você pode me falar da comunidade de sapateado do Brazil comparada com Nova York?
FG: Como mencionei antes, sou de São Paulo e a comunidade é muito pequena. Eu estava sempre viajando para cidades próximas, ou trazendo profissionais para dar aulas na cidade. Já passei por situações em que tive que explicar para as pessoas o que era o sapateado, porque elas nunca tinham ouvido falar na dança. O que é compreensível, pois é uma forma de arte americana. Entretanto, a comunidade tem crescido muito nos últimos anos e e ela conta com meu total apoio.

NH: Faz três anos que você mudou do Brasil para os Estados Unidos, e falando com você eu diria que seu inglês é muito bom. Você pode contar um pouco de como era dar aulas quando seu inglês não era tão afiado? Qual tipo de ferramentas você usava para se comunicar quando as palavras lhe faltavam
FG: Eu me lembro quando dei a minha primeira aula nos EUA. Foi para a Lynn Schwab na Steps on Broadway. É difícil quando você precisa explicar coisas que está acostumado a dizer em outra língua. Eu me senti frustrado e trabalhei duro. Enfrentei o desafio, e aprendi muito perguntando para os próprios alunos quando não sabia.

Honestamente, meu inglês ainda não é perfeito, e ainda tenho que aprender bastante. Por exemplo, na aula de hoje, a única maneira que encontrei para explicar o que queria foi dizendo: “Imagine você usando uma fralda”. Depois, eu afirmei: “Hora de colocar a fralda!”. E, claro, no final da aula, eu lembrei: “Não esqueça de trazer sua fralda na próxima aula”. É divertido!

Getting to Know Tony Waag-- Part II

by Nicole Harris

As Tony Waag's TAP CITY Festival kicks off today, I wanted to take a moment to share with you another part of my interview with Tony from this winter.  Keep an eye out this week for more information about Tony, TAP CITY and Friday's performance (which I'll be dancing in!)

NH:  Who are some of your favorite choreographers?
TW:  Brenda Bufalino, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, I love Fred Astaire's stuff with Hermes Pan.  I have a really hard time with the word favorite because I really do like variety.  I could say anything from Busby Berkeley to Balanchine.

NH:  Are you doing any performing right now?
TW:  No, not really.  Every once in a while.  I felt bad about that for a while but then I realized that I'm just taking a break.  I didn't feel like performing for a while, so now when I do I totally love it.  I don't NEED to perform, although I might feel the need to perform again.  Eventually there's a conflict.  There just isn't time.  You can't do everything.

NH:  What about choreography?
TW:  No, I would say I'm kind of revisiting choreography.  I have concepts that are going around it my head but I don't get into the studio much.  I have a piece in Thank You, Gregory.  I had never put a solo of my own on anyone else before.  We made it into a duet and I got a kick out of it, seeing my choreography on these two guys.  I changed it a little bit, but it was really just dipping back into it.  You know, you're never really done with a piece.  I'm never satisfied.

NH:  I hear you've been teaching an Absolute Beginner class?
TW:  I just started teaching again and I'm having a ball because it's just so...  I'm fascinated with it, really.  I feel like I'm looking at it completely different than I have before.  You look at these people and think, why can't they figure this out?  And then you think, well maybe if I try this...  After just three or four classes someone that you thought was hopeless has improved by 50%.

Getting to Know Tony Waag

The American Tap Dance Foundation
by Nicole Harris

Since moving to New York three years ago I have been fortunate enough to take class, dance and work with some amazing members of the tap dance community. Many of these opportunities would not have been possible if not for all the hard work and dedication of Tony Waag. Tony is the Artistic/Executive Director of the American Tap Dance Foundation, a non-profit committed to establishing and legitimizing Tap Dance as a vital component of American Dance through creation, presentation, education and preservation.

ATDF started in 1986 as the American Tap Dance Orchestra, a vehicle for the choreography of Brenda Bufalino, of which Tony was a featured performer and Executive Director. As the organization grew to include more education they opened Woodpeckers Studio from 1989 to 1995. In 2002 TAP CITY, The New York City Tap Festival was created and the name changed from the American Tap Dance Orchestra to the American Tap Dance Foundation. In January of 2010 The American Tap Dance Center opened its doors on Christopher Street in New York City, creating a home for all of ATDF's programming, from classes for all ages and levels, to workshops and performance opportunities, to the Tap City Youth Ensemble.

This winter I got to sit and talk with Tony about ATDF, the festival, his career and plans for the future and the art of tap dancing.

NH: What is your favorite part of what the organization does?
TW: Well, you know it changes. Most recently (of course, I'm so into the festival and I love performing and the artistic things like being part of a show) but most recently it's been the kids and the classes and just seeing them tap dance.

NH: Do you think that having a home will change the organization?
TW: I think the fact that it's growing and reaching more people is change. It has become more challenging. I think it gives us more of an identity. It's easier for people to wrap their brains around something they can actually see and experience on a consistent basis.

NH: Part of your mission statement is about preservation. Can you tell me a little about that?
TW: We got funding last year from the NEA to re-explore two of Brenda Bufalino's pieces. It didn't dawn on me until that moment that it had already been twenty years. The preservation is now, because what feels like it was yesterday was twenty years ago.
It's also a lot of picking up the pieces, the stuff that was really almost lost. I've seen all of these legends die over the last twenty years. Luckily I learned or was part of or had access to either footage or conversations or actual people that learned information or material or dances from these people. From the very beginning it was pretty obvious that that stuff was in danger.

NH: What about preserving work that is being created now?
TW: Well, luckily with technology it's a little easier to preserve things now. If you do a contemporary project and have access to cameras and websites to promote your events or dvds to sell your product you're more likely to capture all that information, not just to preserve it but as a tool to remember it or knowing that you want to be able to use it for promotion later on. You didn't have all these other things before. Luckily a lot of the preservation is happening anyway.

NH: Tap has such an oral history. How do you feel the new technology changes the art form?
TW: Those tools are great as far as education. Yes, you can see the Miller Brothers and Lois on YouTube but it's an easy come easy go. You spend a nano-second looking at it and you think you know what it is. But if you had to work for it, you'd appreciate it differently.
But it's also good because it's a way to get it out to more people. If there's a show with tap dancing on Broadway, even if it's only one number, that's great because it reaches thousands of people. If there's show on television with tap dancing, that reaches millions of people.

Stay Tuned for More Words of Wisdom from Tony Waag, Coming Soon!

Audition Advice

Auditioning for summer programs, colleges, and various choreographers can be a daunting task for dancers. When we heard Sarah Friswell rave about how much she enjoyed her audition for Jacob's Pillow's Tap program, we were really impressed. We invited her to write a little about her experience to see if it might provide insights about how to make this necessary process less stressful.

by Sarah Friswell

This past January, I had the opportunity to audition for the newly created summer tap program at Jacob's Pillow. Luckily, there was an audition in Miami, FL that was accessible to me as I attend the University of Tampa. I left my school at four in the morning and made it with plenty of time to spare for the 10AM audition. I had already had the pleasure of participating in a master class with Dianne Walker when I was a student at Impulse Dance Center in Natick, MA. I was so relieved that she ran the audition with the same feeling as a master class.

We learned a combination in three parts and set it to all different tempos and styles of music. Throughout the two hour audition, we talked as a group about how we wanted to interpret the sounds and what we wanted our feet to be saying. I really enjoyed the combination we did. In fact, I decided to use it in my choreography for the University of Tampa's student show, The Spring Dance Happening.

I was very touched that Dianne also talked to us about her professional career and she really spoke to us as a community of tappers. One phrase Dianne talked to us about is to "put it in your pocket". This phrase is used to describe a dancer really understanding movements fully and fully embodying what the movements mean. I have used that phrase since then to inspire my dancers to work together as a group and to really feel the movements in the piece instead of just performing different steps. I will never forget the wonderful experience I was able to have and I am so grateful that I have gotten to work with Dianne now on multiple occasions. She is truly and inspiration.We worked very hard in the audition and it really exemplified how valuable an audition is as a learning experience. It also showed me just how much more I might receive through the tap program at The Pillow should I be lucky enough to attend their program sometime in the future.

American Tap Dance Center

by Nicole Harris

As 2010 is starting on it's way I have started dedicating more of my time to being in the studio. Be it building new pieces (like the one Karen and I are premiering here in New York in early February!), practicing technique or improvising with friends and fellow dancers I am determined to take advantage of the studio space that is available to me.

Luckily, on January 4th the American Tap Dance Center (154 Christopher St) opened its doors. The new home of the American Tap Dance Foundation not only holds its offices but two beautiful new studios. In addition to a variety of tap classes visitors are likely to encounter any number of New York's tap community practicing, teaching, rehearsing or just sitting around catching up as they pass between studios.

The fabulous new facility creates more (much needed) studio space in the city but more importantly it gives the community a chance to participate first hand in all of the amazing things the American Tap Dance Foundation does for the art of tap dance. Keep an eye out because I know Tony, Hjordis, Susan and Courtney have big plans for the space they now call home and you don't want to miss out!

p.s. Want to know more about ATDF? Watch out for an upcoming interview with Artistic/Executive Director Tony Waag! In the meantime, check out their website!