Today, is the day when the rubber meets the road, so to speak.  The day when what has been addressed here in theory becomes applied in practice.  A day when we should think about how we can take what we have shared here into the outside world.

Do you know why I have spent so much of my life focused on the “percussive” side of step dancing?  It is the only form of movement in which the movers have an audible contribution, where we, as dancers finally have a “voice.”  When we can finally be heard.  We can now be regarded as equal contributors to the music.  We now have a way of moving that actually changes the sonic landscape, that affects the way music sounds, that colors and shades the way people hear music as if we were taking them on a tour and showing them our favorite parts of a tune.

People always say that with great privilege like this, like having an audible “voice,” comes great responsibility.  I think I see this the other way around.  We have talked a great deal about the responsibility we have as musicians; of listening carefullys to our musical colleagues, of being aware of our volume, of always caring for the tune, of maintaining consistent tempo…. these are the responsibilities.  The privilege part, on the other hand is that we would have a “voice” (taps feet) in the choir.  That we would have a contribution to make to the community that is as valued as this (fiddles).

And so greater than my aspirations for a great performance tomorrow, a polished product that we can point to and say “here, this is what we did at fiddle camp,” what is more important to me is that you retain your dance “voice.” Take it home with you, continue to help it grow, to feed it, to educate it by listening, by thinking and by feeling, expose it to other voices – other sounds, rhythms, tunes and not just from the American or even the Celtic parts of the world…but from everywhere.  Because I suppose by doing this, by educating ourselves about the way of others, we can learn to respect them, to honor them and I believe to appreciate them – not even necessarily for their similarities, but for their differences.  This I believe, is a very healthy thing for the time we live in.

This week we have covered a lot of ground: we have learned American flat-footing, some Celtic step dance in the form of Irish sean-nós dancing, we have explored rhythms from West Africa and from Latin America, we have experimented with the idea of groove and used American tap dance as a means to do so, and we constructed a new piece of step dance choreography to a brand new original Scottish fiddle tune.  It is my hope that you take these steps and rhythmic figurations home with you and pull them out when you are around music of any kind.  That you take them with you not only as a souvenir of your experience at Sierra Fiddle Camp, but as a reminder of the responsibility but mostly the privilege we have of using our “voices” both on the dance floor and throughout the rest of our lives.