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Pamela

Last Updated: 6/10/2009

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Gender: Female
Status: Married
Age: 93
Sign: Libra

State: Pennsylvania
Country: US
Signup Date: 5/25/2007

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Check out this Washington Post Review (with me in it)!!!

Tappening, Spotlighting The Art of Footwork

Tap Show at the Atlas Is a Sparkling Rarity

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By Sarah Kaufman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 21, 2008; Page C02

Tap-dancing is a peculiarly obsessive art, honed in loneliness, its devotees driven to find the tiniest ways to produce big sounds, or to deliver a rat-a-tat clarity whose source no eye could follow. Because it's so blasted hard to do, it's one of the few popular dance styles you're unlikely to see contestants perform on Fox TV's "So You Think You Can Dance" -- it cannot be faked with costuming and camera angles, the way waltzing and krumping can.

Lucky for audiences at the Atlas Performing Arts Center this weekend, a host of true tap obsessives were on display, in two evenings of works by the local trio Tappening and guest artists. "Against the Grain," as the show was called, displayed the art of tap dance at its simple, confounding best, sans flash, with the focus squarely on the feet.

Tappening Artistic Director Heidi Schultz, a veteran tap teacher and dancer, hadn't put together a show of this scale (10 works, seven out-of-town artists) in two years. Indeed, a professional all-tap night has become a rarity in these parts. But there was no shortage of enthusiasm in Saturday's near-capacity audience for the often blistering dancing, with music ranging from the lilting cool of Gabin to folk singer Chris Bathgate to the Clash.

Schultz, with longtime collaborators Michelle Amorese and Vikki Weinberger, dominated the program with hard-hitting rhythm tap, digging into the stage, showing off crazily flexible ankles that allowed the edges of their shoes to get a pounding, too. Over six works, however, their dancing grew predictable, especially since it was more about planting themselves and dishing out tricky beats than about using the stage space in interesting ways.

In the opening dance, "Redemption Song," accompanied by a cover of Bob Marley's classic, the three women were joined by David Covington, a onetime member of Tap Dogs and the most electrifying dancer of the evening. He combined a nonchalant upper body with ringing, pay-attention power of the feet. It's a pity he wasn't seen again until the free-for-all group dance at the end.

In "Aya," Quynn Johnson and Alyse Jones wore somewhat unusual attire: high-heeled tap shoes, lending them a lighter, airier teeth-chattering kind of sound. They had a deliciously buoyant movement quality and a natural, organic musicality, as if the beat were rolling up and out of every limb.

The Philadelphia-based Tap Team Two & Company (Rochelle Haynes, Pamela Hetherington and Corinne Karon) scoured the stage with a sparkling, lifted-up style, as well as a palpable intensity. Lauren Squires put a smart spin on the traditional art of the tap solo in "All of My Friends Have Been Replaced With Cities," toying with the silences in a wistful Bathgate song, now filling them in with bunched-up beats, now doling out her taps with wait-for-it suspense. She kept it all in scale, though; her dancing was as clean and open as the music.

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3:52 PM

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Our house

We are approaching the one year anniversary of moving into our first home. Our house is 185 years old, (yes, you read that correctly), it's tiny and falling apart in places, but I love it. It has its own unique sort of charm with knotty pine floors, (as old as the house, in most of the rooms), 2 foot wide window sills, stone walls, and parts of the original spiral staircase which used to run right up through the center of the house. The third floor has also been turned into my tap space, (although Dale still has hopes that one part of it will be his man cave, so I work on tap steps while staring at two disembodied deer heads). Actually, what sold me on the house was not the interior so much (when we looked at the house for the first time, the bathroom had peeling pink vinyl tile and a pink toilet which literally sat one foot off of the floor), but the exterior. A 75 foot pine tree in our backyard sold me on this house. It was probably planted when this house was built, and it's the kind of tree that calms you as soon as you sit beneath it. It gives off powerful vibes. No problem seems too big or impossible to solve if I just sit under my tree and think for a while. Having this tree in our backyard is absolutely worth making a mortgage payment every month. In fact, Violet and I are headed out to the yard right now to swing beneath it in the hammock Dale gave me for Mother's Day. After all of the moving we did over the past 5 years, there is nothing quite like having your own piece of the world to call home.

12:09 PM

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

That’s my girl!

This morning, as we're rushing out of the house as usual, and I'm trying to get Violet dressed in clothes that match, get her hair under control, etc., she decides that she wants to put her "tappy shoes" on. So, she sits down and slides them on without the ribbons. "Mommy, let's tappy dance," she says with a huge grin on her face, and it killed me to tell her no!! I can't think of anything I'd rather do more than tappy dance with my little missy. So, I had to pry the shoes off of her feet, causing an extreme temper tantrum, but I just had to laugh to myself in the midst of the craziness. Oh my goodness, that's my girl!

12:56 PM

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Monday, May 05, 2008

New photos

A few weeks ago, I helped my friend JJ out by participating in his new photo project, "How Philly Moves." JJ is an old college buddy who used to take wonderful shots of our Penn Dance shows; I also recruited him as my wedding photographer before he became really famous :-)

I LOVE THESE PHOTOS! They are exactly what I wanted. I wanted some photos of myself tap dancing that were a little darker, a little more comtemplative, a little edgier than the norm. I wasn't too sure if they'd come out well, considering that I made the decision not to have my usual cheese-y smile plastered on my face, but there are some real keepers. I LOVE THESE PHOTOS!! Thanks a million, JJ.

4:08 PM

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Monday, April 07, 2008

New stuff

For the first time in a long time, choreography is just spilling out of me, quicker than I can even capture or process into stable rhythms. A few weeks ago, I decided to complete a 5 minute solo for the April show, just for fun, just to test myself. So, every night, after Violet is asleep, I tiptoe upstairs to our attic to work for a hour or two. Maybe it’s the fact that I have my own space to think and dream in, or maybe it’s because I finally realize that I have something valuable to say, but the ideas just seem to flow out of my fingertips, my toes, my heart. It’s been a freaking hell of a lot of fun to work on this solo. Come see what I’ve been working on at the CEC on April 26. It is only the beginning.

12:25 PM

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Friday, January 25, 2008

Profile picture

The picture of all of us Philly tappers was taken in October 2006. I am so proud to be in that picture with LaVaughn Robinson, Robert, and all of my long-time tap friends. It was a bitterly cold day up on the Art Museum steps, and all of us were shivering and jumping up and down to keep warm. It was a alot of fun.

LaVaughn passed away this week. He lived a long, legendary, and full life, and I don't think anyone could ever count exactly how many people he inspired to tap, and to keep tapping. The number might run into the hundreds of thousands.

I met LaVaughn when I was 15. I signed up to take the Summer World of Dance classes at UArts, and he was still teaching the tap classes in the old, dusty building at Broad and Spruce that was torn down years ago. I walked into his class with two-inch -heeled tan character shoes, and tights, and probably a leotard, with boxer shorts over the entire ensemble. My background was straight-up Broadway tap, but from my classes with Delphine and Leon a few years before that, I definitely knew who LaVaughn was when I entered his class, and I was so, so excited to be there.

For 4 weeks, we reviewed what I came to know later as the "slow/fast." Yep, for 4 weeks straight, that's all we did - a 16 bar phrase. What I remember most vividly about the classes is how simple the steps seemed. Coming from a Broadway background which is all about flash, arms, quick steps, and fitting as many counts into an 8 as possible, I was finally forced to focus just on the feet and the rhythms. Actually, the steps weren't all that simple; in essence, they were points of departure, or templates, which left a lot of room for interpretation.

I think what I'll always remember about LaVaughn is how closely he guarded his steps. A hot step was like gold to a street dancer, you know? His classes focused mainly on listening; he didn't really break down the steps too much - it was up to you to create the music. He wasn't going to just give it all away. I didn't realize at the time exactly how important of a lesson this was. At the age of 15, I was still itching for someone to "teach" me stuff. Several years later, I have to come to realize that the music and the rhythm has to come from deep within. You need to just breathe and let it loose. If you keep copying someone, eventually, you are going to run out of things to say.

It took me a while to get there, but I'm finally starting to realize that I have a lot of things to say, too.

6:50 PM

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Thursday, September 13, 2007

Bragging time

I'm going to perform at the Academy of Music on October 20!

11:21 AM

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