Tap Dining with Lynn Schwab
I am waiting in the chaotic hot halls of the dance studio, STEPS on Broadway, ready to meet with Lynn Schwab, on of the most established tap teachers and fresh, up and coming performers in New York City. After five hours of teaching tap she is gracious enough to give me this interview.
I want to meet with her to ask her about teaching, performing, and how she’s developed as a dancer – to get to know the dancer beyond the tap and share a closer look at this complex, serious, accomplished individual. Lynn – a chic, petite woman with striking dark eyes and coal-black hair – is full of energy, in fact, inexhaustible!
It’s December and we rip-roar down Broadway shouldering through the crowded streets. We quickly head indoors out of the windy chill to eat and talk over a warming dinner. She’s hungry, but diving into scalding hot tofu soup isn’t easy, though anything is possible. At last the hill of shrimp, plump and sizzling, shakes her from fatigue.
Lynn is passionate about tap dancing. She seriously got into a pair of taps at 25, when she moved to California. “Never in a million years did I thing I’d be a dancer. I was overweight and old, she says, laughing, plucking a pink shrimp from her plate and popping it into her mouth. But Lynn not only has the energy of a teenager – she is muscular and lean.
She tells me about the start of her dance career. While living in the suburbs, outside of Chicago, she danced from age five to eight, taking jazz, tap, and ballet. It wasn’t until after college that she started dancing professionally in jazz dance. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1982 in Physical Therapy. After college she moved to Boston to work in her field. She also studied and performed jazz in studio performances. Lynn found work in Santa Barbara in 1985, and moved to California where she found tap to be the most exciting dance form over any other kind of dance. She had the opportunity to study with Sam Weber, Mark Mendonca, and Joy Hewitt. It was in Santa Barbara that she began teaching and using her skills as a physical therapist, incorporating what she’d learned in school with what she’d learned from her dance instructor, putting everything together into her teaching. She says, “The thing that helps me teach is the physical therapy. Being able to watch people and figure out biomechanically what’s getting in their way. I can see it and know enough about motor learning to know what’s going to help them.”
As a teacher, Lynn focuses on precise rudiments and instruction such as releasing the ankle before doing a heel drop to create space in the sound and body, or making sure your body weight is shifting in the right direction so you are absolutely balanced on one leg, or making a conscious choice in the tones you are creating with the taps. In class, she provides the opportunity to break down moves – a brush, dig, or stamp – and splits them open. She asks her students to use their voices as they dance, calling out or singing the rhythm of the choreography. “Sing it clearly,” she says, “with your voice, with your feet. Tap is a conversation! You’re saying something with your feet. Enunciate it so I can understand what you’re telling me!” With enthusiasm, Lynn continues, “And the other part is, what are you feeling? You don’t want to ramble on. Dancing half way is not expressing how you feel.” I ask her about the choreography she uses in class and how she feels about the tap dancers that came before her. She shows nostalgia for the “early” tap expression and will teach choreography by Eddie Brown, Bill Robinson, Leon Collins, and Buster Brown. “People know some of Buster’s choreography, like Jeannie Hill and Max Pollak. They pass it on. You want to make sure you are giving honor to others that came before you.”
Leaning back in her chair, smiling, Lynn lists the fabulous teachers she’s had throughout her career: “Barbara Duffy, Sam Weber, Jeannie Hill, Margaret Morrison, Brenda Bufalino, Mark Mendonca, Billy Siegenfeld. How great is all that? The standards are really high, man!” After spending 12 years in California, Lynn moved to New York City to study with Barbara Duffy. She had seen Barbara on an American Tap Dance Orchestra video and knew she had wanted to study with her. “I felt a connection to her,” Lynn says. “Her classes changed my life! It was the first time I understood the weight shift thing, but I felt like I was starting over again as a dancer. I thought I could dance – but with Barbara I had to peel away the layers. Starting over late in life was a whole new challenge. I knew I wanted to do it but sometimes I felt like I couldn’t hang, you know?” She shakes her head, considering what she’s said.
Currently, Lynn performs with Barbara Duffy and Company and with Susan Hebach’s Tap Collective and enjoys doing ensemble work in both companies.
In Lynn’s performance work, she holds musical phrases together in perfect rhythm, sitting in the groove, tapping the floor with clear tones – ping, ping, and ping! each note sounding distinct, like a drummer, shifting into something syncopated, musical – thwack, tick, boom! Her center of weight is low, her body releases, and she glides around the stage speaking through her taps, every move making sense.
“This is what I try to teach my students,” she says. “How can you show you are making sense? How can you use your voice to create the conversation? What are you saying with your feet?” As a dancer, she never allows the music to fade or become gestural. She speaks to the audience without being forceful or overdone, but she does like to speak to the audience.
I have to ask her why she has her class face away from the mirror. It’s a fantastic idea and everyone seems to dance with greater ease facing the back or side of the room. “Working in front of a mirror takes you out of your body,” she says, it’s one-dimensional. When you dance without staring into a mirror, you’ll hear yourself tap. You’ll feel your body.” Her class is serious fun. “There’s no messing around.” But it’s a blast to be in class wit her! Lynn puts her heart into describing dance. “We all hear syncopations we’re not upt to yet. [But] we’ll discover things if we stay open to them, like other techniques and styles. I think it’s important to move around in dance and listen to other rhythms. We all have our favorite grooves. Students should throw themselves off balance and when they come back, they’ll be better dancers.” It’s important for her to acknowledge dancers who have been influential in general and those who have been influential to her. “I never thought I’d be on stage with Jeannie Hill, Josh Hilberman, Cintia Chamecki, or Lynn Dally,” she says, “or Max Pollak, Heather Cornell, and Pia Neises. I don’t want to leave anyone out, but being on stage with these people is all icing on the cake. I’m not even close to what I want to aspire to. The standards are really high and I want to be up there. You can’t do it half way.”
Lynn mentions great dancers like Jimmy Slyde, Brenda Bufalino, and Gregory Hines who have encouraged her. “They have opened doors and made huge changes in the tap world.”
In New York, Lynn was a member of the Feraba African Rhythm Tap Company. She has performed with Barbara Duffy and Susan Heback at the Duke on 42nd Street for the two “Tap City” festivals. With the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, in Brooklyn, she choreographed and performed a solo piece. She has also performed at Town Hall and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. While assisting Cholly Atkins last year in the NYC Tap Festival, “Tap City,” Lynn realized that her dancing had become solid and clear. It was a moving experience for her and her dancing became more visceral.
It is the end of our dinner and crisp fortune cookies have been cracked. Like eggshells, they lie open and crumbled on the empty table. The fortunes have been told, but I can’t help but wonder what else she will bring to her teaching and performing career. We laugh, say our goodbyes, and somehow feel lighter knowing that tap dancing opens so many inner worlds and reaches the core of our beings.
Emily Klemmer
"On Tap" Volume 14, Number 2 FALL 2003