By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Sabrina Starr's tap dance class rehearses
in her Wahiawa studio.
By Tim Ryan
Star-Bulletin
Nigel Triffitt is a lot like "Tap Dogs," the show he designed and directs: Brash, direct, in your face, no holds barred, in other words, quite Australian, mate.
Profanity slides through his conversation as easily as the 48-year-old Tasmanian orders another orange juice during lunch; his lack of sexual relations due to a hectic schedule is mentioned, as is the quick dispatching of his own company's press releases about the show: "All that stuff about the show being about the working class is BS."
"Tap Dogs," the Australian beefcake tap-a-thon that opens for a two-week run Tuesday at the Hawaii Theatre, features six husky hoofers showing off lots more than just fancy footwork. Sex, as they say on Madison Avenue, sells and Triffitt agrees.
"'Tap Dogs' represents nothing," Triffitt said. "We have big boys without shirts or in lumberjack shirts wearing Blundstone books smashing the floor. That's all there is; no story line, and no dialogue to speak of. This isn't bloody 'War and Peace," it's tap dancing; it's a football match with all four quarters running together."
By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Sabrina Starr leads a class of young dancers in a tap routine.
The instructor says the sounds and the rhythm make
the dance form popular with kids.
Lots of people have found the raw energy and overt masculinity of "Tap Dogs" very pleasing. It's successfully toured in more than 20 countries and four companies are on the road this year. The show was an immediate hit at the Sydney Theatre Festival, where it had its world premiere performance in January 1995.These tappers -- there are four Americans and two Aussies in the Hawaii show -- have turned the art usually associated with Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines into a rock 'n' roll dance extravaganza. These "boys" preen and strut with the vanity of bodybuilders in water, shadow boxing, shedding quarts of perspiration while tapping on metal girders, wooden beams and drum pads. But don't calls these blokes Chippendale dancers, Triffitt warns.
"Our boys aren't that pretty," he said, laughing.
"Tap Dogs" is about the glory of dance and the joy of sex, Triffitt says, reveling in both the choreographed athleticism and the idealized masculine form.
"I think Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly would be delighted to see that the art form has moved into the '90s," Triffitt said. "They did the Pat Boone version of Little Richard songs and they blanded it out to make it acceptable to the white market. And we do it in heavy boots."
"Tap Dogs" is part of a trend in dance that showcases more populist, even working-class, styles, the highest profile being the Tony Award-winning "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk," which celebrates the African-American roots of tap dance.
Tap Dogs is rivaled in popularity by the extravaganza "River-dance," which begins with Celtic high-stepping and gradually blends it with American tap.
A fourth show is probably the closest to "Tap Dogs" -- "Stomp!" a story-free celebration of percussion that takes place on a set somewhat similar to the one in "Tap Dogs," all industrial materials and style. That's where the similarities end. "Tap Dogs" does it with feet, "Stomp!" uses sticks and cast-off items.
Special to the Star-Bulletin
Tap Dogs' Hawaii performances begin next week.
Triffitt says the athletic quality of "Tap Dogs" is responsible for its broad appeal to audiences that wouldn't be caught dead at an Alvin Ailey performance, much less the ballet."Our show is very tribal; it connects to people through that, and that's why the show is so popular with men.
"Even unwilling husbands and boyfriends who are dragged to the show end up loving it because it's not effeminate. They watch the dancers like they might watch an excellent athlete, someone they admire for physical ability ..."
The "Tap Doggers" range in age from 16 to late 20s, though most are in their early 20s. Because of the tough physical requirements of the show, dancers "peak early, are used up, then thrown away," says Triffitt.
Injuries can be nasty, including broken noses caused by mis-timing and long-term stress injuries to knees. Of the original cast, only one is still performing with the company.
Tap dancing hasn't gained the popularly in Hawaii it has on the mainland. Jack Cione has about 50 adults in his weekly tap-dance class at the Waikiki Community Center.
"It's popular," Cione said, "because of the rhythm and beat. You're making music with your feet and you're far more loose and free than in ballet."
The Sabrina Starr Modeling and Dance Studio in Wahiawa has about 60 children aged 5 years to 16 in its weekly tap class.
"We require taking it in our school for learning good rhythm," Starr said. "The kids love it because it's fun, but it's very technical and takes a bit more work. Kids love hearing the sounds they make."
And what about that name: "Tap Dogs"?
"It means nothing," Triffitt repeats. "'Dog' is the key word. Dogs are what they are."
Tap combines elements of African drumming and dancing with the techniques of European clog and step dancing. The history of tap
The unique rhythms of jazz music distinguish American tap dance from other kinds of dancing that are based on percussive footwork. Between the 1600s and early 1800s, tap slowly evolved from European step dances such as the jig and clog, and a variety of secular and religious African step dances that were loosely labeled "juba" dances and "ring shouts."
Danced primarily by enslaved Africans, this blend of jig and juba was transferred to the minstrel stage, and there it was polished into something identifiable as "American tap dance."
After the Civil War, new steps were added to the tap vocabulary: syncopated "stop time," "soft shoe," "waltz clog" and "time step." Dancers relaxed their postures; arms and shoulders were often used for whimsical gestures.
With vaudeville, great individual talents like Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and John Bubbles helped refine rhythm tap dance, and later Hollywood popularized tap dance worldwide with films featuring Fred Astaire, the Nicholas Brothers and Eleanore Powell.
During the 1950s, the style of dance changed and tap lost popularity, though tap dancers continued to dance for their own pleasure.
In the '60s, a revival began, and during the 1970s, tap returned to Broadway, film and the concert stage in the United States, Europe and Japan. The public's interest in tap produced several Broadway hits: "Black and Blue" and "Jelly's Last Jam," and films such as "The Cotton Club," "Steppin Out" and "Tap."
Tap Dogs
When: Opens Tuesday; runs through Nov. 3
