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Video: 5 Tap Dancing Tips from DeWitt Fleming, Jr.
Feb 6, 2025
Worried your lack of tap dancing skills is keeping you from living your best triple-threat life? Get back to the basics and tap your troubles away with DeWitt Fleming, Jr., who not only plays 'Lincoln Perry' in Broadway's A Wonderful World, but is also the show's tap choreographer. Follow DeWitt's five simple steps to better tapping in this video!
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Hey everybody, my name is DeWitt Fleming Jr. from the Broadway Show A Wonderful World
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I play Lincoln Perry and I am also the tap dance choreographer for the show
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I am here at Art, New York, and we're about to have a tap lesson. You ready
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All right, here are some tips for you tap dancers out there
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The first one is to lift your knees. Lift your knees. You want to create space between your foot and the floor so you can get out the step that you're trying to do
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Also, you're going to have the best quality of sound because you let that sound escape and get out
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The second reason you want to lift your feet and lift your knees is that it engages your center
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That's your second tip. You always want to make sure you have a strong center
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Tap dance is like any other style of dance. Your center, your core is what's going to really help you to do the best and be versatile
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and be able to get out all that choreography and all the dance steps. Now, this one has to do with a shuffle
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You always want to learn and practice your shuffles open. Keep them nice and open
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Okay? The reason why is because you want to strengthen these muscles in your legs to make sure that when you're doing any kind of step
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that you have the strength and ability to lift that foot to get that shuffle out
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So don't keep it closed. Make sure you keep it nice and open
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So when you're doing stuff slower or you're syncopating something or you're doing an accent
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you'll have the access and ability to do it because that shuffle is nice and open
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Tip number four stay on the balls of your feet Balls not tippy toes balls of your feet When you starting out you want to make sure those hills are off the ground
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so you develop that strength in your legs and condition yourself to be able to move and dance on the balls of your feet
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Keep that weight there, you can transition through your steps a lot easier that way
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Tip number five, tap dancers, have fun. Enjoy yourself and find that joy in the dance
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dance. Tap dance started off with self-expression. So make sure you always bring that joy, that
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light that you have that nobody else has to your dance and whatever you do. All right, cool
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So these are five steps. Tap dance steps that everybody should know. We're going to start from
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the easiest to maybe the hardest. The easiest everybody knows how to do and that's just
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stomp. That's it. You just stomp. Stop your foot, right? The second one is a toe heel
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So what happens is you do toe, you keep that weight on your toe, and then you drop your heel
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Yes? Toe, heel. That's the second step. The third one, uh-oh, it's getting harder
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You ready? It's called a shuffle. First thing, you lift your leg
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Then you go out and then in. You're only hitting this part of your foot, the front part where you're
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your toe is. So you go up, you go out, and then you go in and lift back up
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That's called a shuffle. The next step is a paddle. You start that with your foot up you doing your heel into the ground and then you spank that toe up and then we end with the toe heel To heel That what we learned earlier So you go heel out you spank up up and then toe heel
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That's called a paddle. So you put those two things together. Get that heel out, dig, spank, toe heel
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Step number five, this is probably the hardest one to learn. This one takes time. It's called a flap
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This is a beautiful thing about tap dancing. dancing is that it's about the sound as well as the visual
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Now I'm going to show you something. On the bottom of my foot, this is the tap that's on the tap shoe
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When you do a flap, you want to hit the front part of your tap and then go to the center
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The front and then the center. That's what creates that flapp sound, where you get high low, high low
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So when you do your flap, lift up your knee, point that foot, hit the front, and then the
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front part of your tap and then land on the center. So that's probably the most common step you'll
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see in musicals and Broadway and movie musicals. It's called the fla-flat. Flap, flat, flat, flat
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as I was creating in this choreography, I was so excited because we span 60 years of American history
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through Lewis Armstrong. And tap dance, we get to cover a period
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which is in the 20s, 30s, 40s, where tap dances was just
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it was explosive, it was everywhere. It was the most popular style, you saw it everywhere
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You had so many neat performers that paved the way for us So what I really wanted to do was shed some light on some of those performers and really give the different styles of tap that out there So I had this unique opportunity to show people
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that how versatile tap is and how it's changed so much throughout the years. And that was just
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really, really exciting to me. And I really wanted to make sure I pay homage and honor to all
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those people that came before me. All right, I got a challenge for y'all
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Now that you've seen all these tap steps, I want you to come to the show and tell me which ones you see in the show
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Because we do all of them. We do stumps, flaps, paddles. We do toe heels
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So I want you to come and point it out and tell me where you saw these tap steps in the show
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You can go to louisongongmusical.com and get your tickets. You can go to the box office
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We're at Studio 54 on 54th Street. That's a wonderful world. Look, I got it on my t-shirt right there
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A wonderful world, the Lewis Armstrong musical. Come check us out, and I'll see you at the theater
#Dance
#Broadway & Musical Theater