Rain City Tappers

Gathered in a cluster, six dancers flock the footwork of a rotating leader. The front of the formation shifts as the group changes their facing, giving everybody a chance to lead. New leaders create rhythms and playful steps and the rest of the group quickly catches on. The click click clack, brush, dig, and slap sounds find unison among the dancers’ twelve feet. 

Everybody gets a chance to lead. Be Creative. Expand. These are some of the ethos guiding Rain City Tappers during their weeklong UW body-space-time residency. 

If you’re a tap dancer in Seattle, you’ve maybe left your shoes tucked in the closet, or found it hard to access the tap scene. Of course tap is alive and well here– NW Tap Connection, Aspire Kinetic Arts, eXitSPACE, Spectrum, 5th Avenue, VAMstudios–there are lots of places to take class, but there are not many opportunities for advanced adults to perform regular gigs, and even fewer choreographic opportunities. In 2024, Kathryn Hightower noticed this hole, and together with core members Susanna Waldrop and Erin Bowles, Rain City Tappers was formed. 

In the next exercise, Hightower, Waldrop, and Bowles pass the spotlight between each other. Each dancer starts their solo by launching off from the same movement as the previous soloist, while the other two dancers keep time and stay responsive to the new steps. Much like improvisational jazz when the music is peppered with inside jokes and challenges, the dancers must stay actively in conversation with the soloist as they hold and pass the rhythm around. 

I am often fascinated by tap, in that it is both a dance form and music instrument. So much of the movement is about interpreting and facilitating the rhythm of the song through the feet, with the body movement enabling the different sounds of the shoes. You don’t need to see exact unison in the upper body in order to hear unison in the taps. And even if you do the exact same body shapes, you may not be able to produce the same nuanced rhythms and sounds. It’s a lot to stay connected to, between the music and your fellow dancers. There is clear value in honing your movement inside of a collective, in unifying through group processes, shared music, and collaborative movement generation.

After a brief intermission and costume change, the dancers return clad in sparkles and spring colors, with fedoras, ties, and a few garments pulled from the costume bins (perhaps a nod to old recital costumes). The dancers move in and out of unison choreography, formations flowing from circles to triangles to rippling lines. The dancers shift to slow-moton walking, one at a time peeling off into a series of solo phrases that combine into a pleasingly complex overlaid rhythm. The song’s repeated lyric of “they’ll eat your kale” is delightfully accompanied with little chomping hands. The ensemble is clearly having fun being silly together.

Rain City Tappers strives to be non-hierarchical, communicative and to actively support each other. They gather together to hone their technique, to collaborate on composition, and to have fun. Their process has a “yah! let’s try it!” approach, where anyone can propose an idea, voice their opinions or contribute to the choreography. This model is intentionally designed to expand and contract as the group needs in a given phase. During their residency, the core members invited tappers Amy Lingard, Melanie Carter, and Maria Huato to experiment with them. 

In the final part of the showing, the audience joins in on the fun. Lingard leads us through a series of creative movement prompts– walking, high fives and a duet game where you connect an invisible string between you and your partner, playing with the tension and slack. There’s a specific murmuring– giggling mixed with the little squeamish noises people make when they’re on the edge of their comfort zone. The studio is peppered with the exclamations of discovery as invisible strings connect between partner’s hands, weight shifts are mirrored, and an invisible jump rope forms encouraging people to hop over it. Circling up, we run together into the center with our arms upstretched. In a playful imagination score, we pretend to add our happy thought ingredients into a big bowl and compress it into a bouillon cube, which we then break into little bites to eat and take with us. As we leave the theater, every person seems a little more tapped in and cheerful.

And that’s exactly what Rain City Tappers is setting out to do. 

This fall, Rain City Tappers will be launching a Patreon and expanding their core crew. You can follow them on instagram @raincitytappers. If you’re an advanced tap dancer who wants to choreograph and perform with the collective, send them a message of interest through Instagram.

Rain City Tappers performed their UW body-space-time residency showing

Saturday August 30 at the University of Washington Department of Dance. 

Featured photo by Dave Jacobs.