Awol Dance Music

The first thing to do is know what will not work for you. Most Adjudicators at you local Dance Festival will be more mature ladies who have a great deal of dance experience as a performer or as a teacher. Typically, these ladies do not appreciate seeing ten year old girls pretending to be in their twenties performing provocative dances – you’d be surprised how many times I have seen it and cringed!

How good is your tapping?

You need to be honest with yourself here. Many tappers can dance to fast music, but all too often their dancing becomes a little untidy. It is usually better to dance to a slower piece of music to enable you to perform a quality routine rather than dance to something which may show off all your latest steps, but you’re not quite hitting the mark.

Conversely, if your music is too slow you may find yourself wobbling – this is also bad.

So, what works? In the 2009 All England championship the winners almost all used what would be considered to be “traditional” tap solo music. This would be not over orchestrated, usually medium tempo swingy/jazzy tunes or show-tunes. Whilst there is a market for tapping to the more modern music this is usually best left to the professionals.

So, if you are planning to dance a tap solo, duet, trio or group pay particular attention to your music. Choosing the right music can be as important or in some cases even more important than getting the costume right. Choreography should compliment the music and be sympathetic to the style of music.