For These Students, Tap Knows No Age

As a young girl, Mary Lou Cappelli wore her tap shoes everywhere, flapping down the streets and shuffling over her landlord’s head (he lived in the apartment below) in her childhood home in the Bronx.

Much to his dismay, she’d never taken a lesson in her life.

“My mother couldn’t afford to send me to tap dancing, but that didn’t stop me,” she said last Tuesday afternoon. “I never took them off. I used to wear them to bed and everything. I don’t know where I got it from, but here I am, living a dream.”

She waved her arms around the Morris Meeting Room of the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, which doubles as a dance studio for the Senior Tap Class. Nearly six decades from her Bronx performances, Ms. Cappelli is finally getting her shot at stardom here on the East End.

“This is the best thing that ever happened, that this library started this class,” she said.

Ms. Cappelli and her 12 tapping comrades are gearing up for the fourth annual “Senior Tap Class Revue” on Friday, October 7, at the Southampton Cultural Center. The program kicks off with Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” which is representative of this year’s class, she said. Ms. Cappelli added that this year, there is a new instructor, four original numbers, fresh music and, to the delight of the all-female tapping crew, brand new white costumes.

“There really is a whole lotta shakin’ going on,” instructor Mary Castro said following a nearly 90-minute rehearsal.

The next song and dance routine, which will be set to The Andrews Sisters’s “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” is Joan Dimonda’s favorite, simply because it’s fast, she said. But the 66-year-old wasn’t always a fan of tap, she said.

“I danced as a small child, but I begged my mother, ‘Get me out of tap!’ when I was 12,” she said, laughing. “I had had it. I didn’t want any more.”

But Ms. Dimonda’s feelings changed over time, she said.

“When I saw the first class come out at the library, I was too insecure to come to it. So when I saw it the next year, I said, ‘I’ve gotta do this,’” she recalled. “I just smile the moment the music comes on until it’s over with.”

The first class began in 2007, led by former instructor Doris Dunn, according to Rogers Memorial Library program director Yvette Postelle. Ms. Castro joined a year later and, with 40 years of tap experience, quickly became Ms. Dunn’s assistant.

“My reflexes weren’t as fast, I’d been away from dancing for a while, and I wanted to get back into it,” the 66-year-old Ms. Castro recalled. “But all of the local adult classes started with age 14 and up, and there ain’t nothing sadder in a dance mirror than standing next to a 16-year-old who can really move it. So I came to Doris’s class and I’ve been here ever since. When she turned 89 last year, she said she was going to give it up and asked if I would take over.”

And so she did.

During this particular class, her counts of “Five, six, seven, eight!” can be heard from the hallway through the crack between the room’s double wooden doors. “Give those poms a punch!” she commanded during the opening number, which is accented with silver pom-poms. “Shake, shake, shake!”

In the last half hour of class, the group practiced the big finale: “One” from “A Chorus Line.”

“It’s got this Broadway wow to it, which I just love,” Irene Carter said after class.

Like many of her peers, Ms. Carter also danced as a child—during the Shirley Temple days, she said—but stopped at age 7.

“I hadn’t done a thing since then, so I started with our first leader, Doris, and she got me and all of these other ladies on our feet and dancing, which was absolutely unbelievable,” she said.

At 84, Ms. Carter says that if she can tap, anyone can.

“Anybody who thinks they even might be able to do it should get on board and see how it goes,” she said.
“And the whole thought is that it should just be fun,” Ms. Dimonda said. “Nobody’s a professional, we’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking to have some presentation on stage, and if it’s not perfect, it’s okay. And if it is, well, that’s a big plus.”

Ms. Postelle said that she’s never seen another program at the library garner this much excitement.

“They just love it,” she said. “People who had back pain, who couldn’t move, are moving.”

“They get those shoes on and they don’t feel pain anymore,” Ms. Castro added.

“And they’re just smiling,” Ms. Postelle said.

She shot a sideways glance toward the instructor and joked, “When you’re not yelling at them.”

Ms. Castro laughed. “I think it’s so nice for the community to see what their grandmothers can do,” she said. “I have ideas for next year cookin’. I can’t wait to start working on them.”

The fourth annual “Senior Tap Class Revue,” performed by the beginner and intermediate tap classes at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, will be held on Friday, October 7, at 11 a.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center. Admission is free, but registration is recommended. For more information or to register, visit myrml.org or call 283-0774 ext. 523.