This week I interviewed Jack Taylor, a junior here at CSULB working towards his degree in Dance Science. I knew Jack was into dance prior to this interview because the class watched his Kickstarter project to choreograph a dance routine underwater, but the actual term Dance Science was new to me. I had assumed that all dance majors were working towards an all-encompassing dance degree that covered performance and choreography but there are actually a few different subsets of the field, Dance Science being a dance degree that more heavily involves studies of anatomy and kinesiology.
Jack has been dancing since he was 12. He started with tap and to this day it is still his favorite because he says tap makes him feel the most involved with whatever music he is dancing too. This makes sense to me because while other dance styles are very connected to the music in the background, styles like tap connect on another level because the dancer actually plays the tap shoes as instrument along with the instrumentation of the music. It also makes sense that Jack would be into a more involved style of dance because he has musical parents (his dad plays a few different instruments and his mom sings). Tap is so ingrained in Jack’s life that he taps everywhere he goes and only buys shoes with soles that tap, surprisingly Toms work.
I asked what kind of music he taps to, expecting him to say ragtime or the general classic tap music. Surprisingly he taps to everything, especially the artists he most likes such as Walk the Moon, m83, Jose Gonzales and Daft Punk to name a few. The conversation then continued to progress on the subject of different types of music until eventually I asked if it were possible to mic up tap shoes for the purpose of legitimately jamming with a tap dancer as an instrumentalist. He said its definitely possible and that he’s even had an instructor who rigged his tap shoes to trigger different electronic sounds on the heel and toe of each shoe. I enjoyed talking to Jack because I learned that dance isn’t just something that one does with music in the background, but actually it’s expression that can even be involved in the music itself.
Check out Jack’s blog here:Â http://jackandrewtaylor.wordpress.com/
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