In this program educators will learn to collaborate with acclaimed tap dancer and choreographer Maurice Chestnut to develop an understanding of the complex history of tap dance as a distinctly African American art form rooted in diasporic traditions.

Educators will gain a clear understanding of the influences of tap including, African djembe rhythms, as well as New Orleans and New York’s Africans and Irish step dancers’ contributions to the percussive dance we now call tap. Each session begins with a rhythm stretch and a percussive call and response warm-up. Participants will experience how the rhythms branch out through the U.S. and morph to create jazz, bebop, swing and hip-hop. As participants are introduced to African American history and culture, they will also master tap dance basics, including shuffle, flap and time step.

Each workshop includes learning tap terminology and choreographic phrases. The workshop ends with a blended combination of tap, jazz and hip hop, a sharing circle where all participants can express themselves rhythmically and time for teachers to reflect on how they will apply new learning to their teaching practice. *Tap shoes are not required for this workshop

Educators will:

• Experience the artistic tap excellence of Maurice Chestnut.
• Gain access to accurate tap history and influential dancers who shaped taps’ evolution.
• Learn tap terminology (shuffle, flap, time step) and apply the terminology to comprehend tap.
• Engage with embodying tap; and being able to reflect, critique, and connect personal experience to tap.
• Discover choreographic devices and expressive elements of tap including call and response, repetition, time, tone and improvisation, and syncopation.
• Consider how the history and artistic practice of tap to nurtures insight into the themes of othering, emotional vocabulary, imagination, resilience, critical thinking, and problem solving.
• Engage with Turn/Talk, Self-Reflection, and Share Out strategies to assess participant learning.
• Establish criteria that allows them to teach a dance genre that is not included in their training base without appropriating the artistic form.

YA Connections:

NJSLS-VPA:

• Creating:
  • Participants will select tap vocabulary to expand movement possibilities, create patterns and structures and develop a main idea.
  • Use dance terminology to explain movement choices.
• Performing: Participants will Perform planned and improvised movement sequences with increasing complexity in the use of space. Establish relationships with other dancers, increasing spatial awareness and design (e.g., diverse pathways, levels, patterns, focus, near/far).
• Responding: Participants will use genre-specific terminology to compare and contrast recurring patterns of movement and their relationships in dance in context of artistic intent.
• Connecting: Participants will relate artistic ideas and works within societal, cultural, and historical contexts to deepen understanding.

Professional Standards for Educational

• Respect: Teachers should respect and honor each student’s efforts and offer encouragement.
• Learning styles: Teachers should recognize and accommodate learning styles and abilities.
• Learning Environment: Teachers should strive to create environments that support individual and collaborative learning, and that encourage positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation

Culturally Responsive Practice

Engage with dance practices grounded in the Black & African Diaspora. Teachers will engage with ways to assign agency to students.

Social-Emotional Learning

SEL Competencies including self awareness, self regulation, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making will be embedded into the teaching and learning experience.

When you pair this program with Maurice Chestnut’s workshop, he provides teachers with the in-classroom support implementing creative teaching practices, what they have learned into practice.