Tap dancer Tommy Wasiuta grew up with a drum set in his basement, playing around with it anytime he got the chance. When he discovered solo drum albums in college, he fell in love with the idea of listening to just one drummer on one drum set. And it sparked an idea: “I was like, ‘I want to do the same thing with tap shoes and see how musical I can get them,’ ” he says.
With this in mind, he started experiencing tap through a new lens, hearing grooves he made with his feet rather than thinking about how the steps looked. “I was thinking about, How do they sound and how is the range of sound that I’m playing? And does it feel good to listen to?” He’d record a voice memo of a phrase, then play it back to himself to focus on just the music his shoes were making. “I wanted to just explore all spectrums of sound within the tap shoes,” he explains.
The result is a solo tap album called Drum Shoes, now available on Spotify to listen to (or dance to). “To my understanding, this is the first album that is just solo tap dance,” Wasiuta says. “It’s exploring the audible aspect of tap dance and getting people to hear it in that way.”
Dance Teacher caught up with Wasiuta to learn more about how he envisions dancers using the album, and how, as both a musician and a tap dancer himself, he teaches his students to become more musical in the tap classes he teaches at schools like Steps on Broadway and the Joffrey Ballet School.
One of the Drum Shoes Tracks Is Made to Be an Interactive Duet
Although Wasiuta says people can enjoy the album just by listening to it, there is one song called “Trade with Me!” that’s designed to be interactive—he alternates four bars of his own dancing with four bars of just a metronome. Then, as the song progresses, the trades get shorter to two bars in length before ending with one-bar trades. “That’s a space for whoever’s listening to interact with me through the album and trade back with me,” he says.
It’s something that he encourages teachers to use as “homework” for their students outside of class to practice trading with another tap dancer even when they’re on their own. “As dancers, we don’t always have access to musicians, so I just wanted this to be an opportunity for dancers practicing on their own to simulate what it’s like.”
To Teach Musicality, He Writes the Notes on the Mirror
Wasiuta says he always keeps an Expo marker in his backpack for teaching musicality in class. “If there’s a phrase that we’re working on, I’ll use the Expo on the mirror and write out the notes that we’re playing,” he says. That way, students see the exact quarter and eighth notes they should be hitting in a phrase. “I’ll make sure that they understand the notes that I’m writing, showing them where the accents are, putting the counts underneath just so they can see it.” As a visual learner himself, Wasiuta says this strategy can help students digest the rhythms in a different way.
He Asks Students to Count Before They Dance
Like many teachers, Wasiuta firmly believes in the power of having students say the counts out loud to give them a clear grasp on how their steps are sitting in and contributing to the music. “And then maybe we count just the downbeat so they know how our steps fit within that,” he explains.
Creating an Album Has Given Him a New Level of Respect for Tap Shoes as a Musical Instrument
Through the process of creating Drum Shoes, Wasiuta has become much more aware of his own sound as a tap artist—and the power of tap shoes as an instrument. “I got very intimate recordings of myself. There were seven microphones on me, so I got all of the good stuff and all of the mistakes,” he says, with a laugh. “Listening back and making sure that I was playing what I wanted, I really learned that tap shoes are a very powerful instrument, and [they] deserve a lot of respect and a lot of patience and a lot of study.”
Top 10 Songs He Loves to Play in Class
Here are Wasiuta’s top 10 song choices to teach to, along with some thoughts on a few that are constantly on repeat when he’s in front of the studio:
“Man From South Africa,” from Percussion Bitter Sweet, by Max Roach, featuring Carlos “Patato” Valdes and Carlos “Totico” Eugenio
“This is a song in seven, so it’s great for teaching odd meters, which gets the student out of their comfort zone. With an odd meter, you hear music in a different way than we normally do—it just expands students’ capabilities as dancers so they’re not tied to dancing in four.”
“Whisk,” from Pocket Change 2: Mad Currency, by Nate Smith
“What’s fun about this one is instead of drumsticks, he’s using metal brushes on the snare drum, and it has a totally different texture. So I use it just to give us a different soundscape to work with in the classroom.”
“Pretty Shuffle,” from Drum Shoes, by Tommy Wasiuta
“This is a fun one that has a really nice triplet-groove feel. And having tap music coming out of the speakers and thinking of it as a song that you’re dancing to, it opens up students’ ears in a different way and just gives them a little bit different exposure to the instrument that they’re playing on their feet.”
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