M3 - Stark Realisation

So my last couple of weeks have been less about actually looking into my topic of inquiry and more setting up meetings and interviews and getting the resources and equipment needed for the next part of my inquiry, so it wasn't until last night when my brain got switched back onto the subject.

Having had a day of holding auditions in Kent for one of the places I work, myself and the lady who runs the organisation walked through her front door to her son who seemed very please with himself. Her son, Kai, is 12 and told us he had spent his day working on a step the entire day (a double wing on one foot for those of you who understand tap terminology, for those of you who don't IT'S HARD!) and that by the end, he had accomplished it. Now, neither I, nor his mother can do this step, and although the kid is really quite ridiculously good, a little bit of doubt had set, so in the end we got him to get his tap shoes out.

Took a couple more attempts than he'd planned, but yes, he did it!

It made me think. This is a step that doesn't appear anywhere in any of the UK's syllabi. A single wing does, and the explanation of the double is easy enough, just nobody is asked to try it! If a twelve year old can do it, because he is willing to try, why do we not offer this to everybody?


This was not the only step that Kai gave me last night. I have been trying to sort out classes for next term in this certain workplace, and myself and the rest of the teachers have put together a list of steps to work from, and are trying to come up with more, as our seniors have nearly exhausted our current repertory and there are only so many times that we can go elsewhere for inspiration, or so much time we have to explore by ourselves in a studio, or sometimes it is simply a fact of we have got to a point where our brain blocks itself off. This is where children and the next generations come in yet again.

People have no option but to use what we provide them with, but it takes a certain mind set to be able to explore. Within a syllabus, people are taught that this exercise is right, or wrong, with very little in between. They are also taught, "At this standard you should do this, and once you have gotten to the end of the syllabus, there is nothing left for you!". This was something that Kai disproved to me last night. Kai, had taken a standard step (Shuffle Pick up - which is one of the syllabi's staple steps) and simply added things to it. Yes, within syllabi, this simple step is adorned with a few things here and there, and a few changes of leg etc, but not to the standard that Kai had shown last night. He had put thing together in a way that I never would have thought, and whilst I relished in the fact that this little human had done this, and grabbed a notepad to write these new fangled (for my eyes, somebody will have done them somewhere) steps down, to try them out myself (I failed abysmally might I just add, but I will work on them), I am a little scared, as I have known it happen to me at a slightly younger age, that there are many teachers who would look at his feet and tell him that "That's not a step in tap", purely because it does not arise in their known tap syllabus and it is not something they recognise.


This has gotten me back to me looking at my inquiry questions and making sure that they are truly what I wish to find out and who I need to be looking at to make a change, if possible. Sometimes it takes one person, no matter how old they are to make you sit back and re-evaluate.