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Encore Performance: How One Woman's Passion Helped a Town Tap Into Happiness - Hardcover

Riordan, Vicki G.; Riordan, Brian

 
9781451643480: Encore Performance: How One Woman's Passion Helped a Town Tap Into Happiness
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1451643489 ISBN 13: 9781451643480
Verlag: Atria Books, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Billy Elliot meets The Golden Girls in this inspiring true story of a woman who learned that it’s never too late to live the life you want.

The inspiring true story of a woman who learned that it’s never too late to live the life you want

As a young girl growing up in the 1950s in central Pennsylvania, Vicki Grubic Riordan idolized stars like Shirley Temple and Gene Kelly. She soon found her calling as a dance instructor, but like many baby boomers, she put her passion on hold to focus on starting a family. Only when her marriage ended and she was left with little means of support for herself and her two young sons did Vicki return to her first true love: teaching dance. In doing so, she found much more than a way to make a living: she found a way to make a difference. With her exuberant personality, infectious enthusiasm, and unwavering belief in the magic of movement to make even the darkest times better, Vicki has inspired thousands of women to do things they never dreamed possible.

At the age of sixty-two, when her peers were thinking about retirement, Vicki opened the doors to what has become America’s largest adult tap dancing studio. She has gone from teaching fifty students a year to teaching more than five hundred, and thanks to Vicki, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has become the unofficial tap capital of the world and the home of her celebrated “Tap Pups.” The majority of the women (and a handful of men) in her classes are in their fifties and sixties, but instead of yielding to the expectation that they’d be slowing down at this stage of life, tap has helped them to get in touch with their own natural rhythm.

Tap helped Anni, 56, get through a difficult divorce with grace. It gave Betsy a newfound self-confidence, and at 57 she was inspired to wear eye makeup for the first time in thirty years. And when Jeanne, 62, was diagnosed with cancer, the Tap Pups rallied to offer their full support. Vicki’s students come from all walks of life: teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, insurance agents, therapists, CPAs, retirees—married, divorced, single, and widowed—but through dancing together, no matter their innate talent or years of experience, Vicki’s Tap Pups have found a potent source of friendship, vitality, and fulfillment.

After years of putting everyone else first, these women know that now it’s their time to shine. In Encore Performance, Vicki inspires readers of all ages to listen to the beat of their own hearts and dance through life as they were born to do.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Vicki Riordan created Vicki’s Tap in 1997 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, beginning with a class of just seventeen students. The Tap Pups have opened up for Chubby Checker, Patti Labelle, and Joan Rivers. Vicki has two grown sons and two granddaughters. Please visit TapPups.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

• • •

Sunday, June 12, 2011

8:35 AM

EVEN BEFORE I TURN THE CORNER TO THE THEATER, I CAN SEE THEM ARRIVING.

They’re streaming along the sidewalks, carrying carefully ironed costumes in plastic dry cleaning bags, loaded down with coolers and folded lawn chairs. They’re in groups, or two by two, chatting and smiling, coming from every possible direction. A few of the ladies see me and try to wave, but they’re carrying too much stuff, so they have to jump up and down to say hello. I give a short honk of the horn, a quick wave, and a big smile.

On any other day of the week, these streets would be busy with state workers making their way to the giant gray municipal buildings just behind us. This is Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and like any state capital across the country, it’s a city where people work in departments with a capital D, where the jobs start at nine and end at five—a workaday universe of offices and cubicles and business suits. But today Harrisburg has glamour. Today the city belongs to these women.

Most of the ladies live within a few miles of here. Many of them will be walking these same sidewalks to the office on Monday. Some are stay-at-home moms with small children. Some are empty nesters with grown children. Many are retired. Some have lived here all their lives; others have moved here from states across the country. The majority of them are grandmothers, although there are some in their twenties and thirties too. In almost every way, the ladies carrying their costumes are like any other women you’d find living in any midsized city anywhere in America, but with one important exception: every one of them is a tap dancer.

In Harrisburg, we’re part of the culture. If you ask people here if they know about our group, the answer is usually “Yes, I’m a tap dancer,” or “Yeah, my mom is a dancer,” or “I’ve seen those ladies in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.” I know dancers who practice their riffs while pushing their shopping carts in the supermarket, because the hard tile floors are perfect for tapping. One lady taps while she walks her dog each morning. When she passes the same elementary school, all the kids give her the thumbs-up. It’s not unusual to see a dancer perfecting a routine while standing by an elevator, or waiting for a bus, or sitting at a table at a restaurant. There’s not another city in the country that’s home to so many adult tappers. We’re the town that loves to tap.

Today is the morning of June 12, the most important day on our calendar. It’s our annual spring show, when we perform for our family, friends, and fans, raising thousands of dollars for charity. As I pull up in my car, I see my dancers filing up to the giant iron doors along six separate pathways in the shape of a sunburst—Busby Berkeley couldn’t have choreographed it better. I glance at my watch. In less than six hours, it’ll be showtime. My son Brian climbs out of the passenger’s seat, and we begin unloading big plastic containers filled with all the dancers’ accessories: pink and black feather hair clips; chiffon scarves in aqua, black, white, red, and polka dot; pink sequined wristbands; silver and red sequined hatbands; and red sequined gloves. With the boxes piled high in our arms, we join the stream of dancers going inside.

As we push open the double doors to the backstage area, the sound of tapping and voices just explodes. Dancers are everywhere: chatting, taking photographs. Others are lined up down the long hallway, practicing their arm movements, and the clatter of their taps is ricocheting off the walls. One group is using a storage area as a dressing room; the rest are using the bathrooms, the green room, and the locker rooms to lay out makeup bags, costume bags, and curling irons. The four men who will be dancing alongside all these ladies today have their own dressing room, otherwise known as the men’s bathroom. I adore these guys—and so do all of my ladies. These men are here strictly for the love of tapping, and they’re not intimidated by doing it alongside all these women.

In the long, wide corridor behind the stage, the ladies have already staked out their areas for the day. They’ve unfolded their lawn chairs and are sitting along the walls, tailgating on the marble floors. They’re preparing for a long day of rehearsals before showtime, with breakfast from the big open coolers at their feet. Everyone is wearing comfortable clothes, sweats, and T-shirts. The costumes come later. Backstage looks like a large outdoor family reunion.

Brian and I leave our boxes of accessories next to the green room and head for the stage. As we walk out from the wings, we see that the production crew has already set up the giant nine-and-a-half-foot V-shaped light in the center of the stage. During the show, the V will flash white and aqua—our signature colors. V for Vicki, my name; V for Vicki’s Tap Pups, our group.

It was my students who came up with the name Tap Pups. A month after I started teaching my first adult tap class in 1997, Brian took me to see the Philadelphia production of the Tap Dogs, an Australian men’s tap group. I was instantly taken with them and talked incessantly about the Tap Dogs to my class. After our first year together, my original seventeen dancers presented me with a birthday gift. The card read, “We realize we will never be as good as your Tap Dogs, but we can at least be your Tap Pups.” My gift was a T-shirt that read, “Vicki’s Tap Pups.”

The name stuck.

As I look out across the huge circular auditorium, with its four tiers of seats, I see different groups of dancers pacing out their steps for the show, arms linked, feet flying. No one looks up. No one wants to forget a step. For nine months now, these ladies have been coming to their classes once a week, some twice a week, or more, to perfect the routines they’ll be performing today. Seven levels of dancers appearing in fourteen different numbers, each with a different style, different costumes, and different challenges. Now that the big day is finally here, it’s easy to spot the ladies who are nervous. They’re the ones spending every spare second going over the choreography, as if their lives depended on it.

In the small hallway that leads to the stage door, I see a group from one of my New Beginner classes helping one another remember a complex sequence they’ll be performing this afternoon. In the middle of the six of them stands Jana, fifty-four years old, a tall woman with straight, bobbed blonde hair and long, graceful arms. Although she’s just one dancer out of many, Jana’s story is true of so many of my Tap Pups.

Ever since she was a little girl, Jana always knew that she’d like to learn to tap-dance, but as a child, she’d never gotten that chance. By the time Jana was old enough to make her own decisions in life, she found herself too busy juggling family, work, and home to make time for her own interests. Only when she was older, and when her children left home, did she realize that this was her time. Maybe she could finally do something for herself. But what activities were there for Jana? For women like us? Not much. She kept hearing experts on TV telling her that she needed to find a passion in order to be fulfilled, but for many reasons, Jana didn’t feel confident that she could try something new. Besides, she never thought of herself as much of a “joiner”—she preferred doing things alone, or with her family.

At this point, Jana had no idea that tap classes...

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Verlag
Atria Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1451643489
ISBN 13 
9781451643480
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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