Our Fabulous Variety Tap Show Comes to Southampton

[caption id="attachment_50263" align="alignnone" width="800"] Dancers with Our Fabulous Variety Show perform “Singing in the Rain.”[/caption]

By Annette Hinkle

At times it seems as if Anita Boyer is on a mission to single-handedly transform the entire East End into one big company of tap dancers.

“‘Tap’ is tattooed on my arm,” says Ms. Boyer. “I live, breathe and die tap. It’s a different thing I do — and I love it.”

Getting others to love it too is a goal that has gained traction thanks to Our Fabulous Variety Show, the East End theatrical troupe which Ms. Boyer co-founded in 2010 with friend Kasia Klimiuk.

In the years since, Ms. Boyer, who teaches tap workshops to toddlers, retirees and everyone in between, has begun showing off her students tapping prowess (as well as her own and Ms. Klimiuk) in a series of OFVS performances. Along the way, she has ignited a whole new level of excitement for tap among dancers of all ages and abilities.

Ms. Boyer and her dancers will be at it again this weekend and next when OFVS presents “Tap: An Evening of Rhythm,” a reprise of a show first presented at Guild Hall last April that takes audiences on a brief trip through the history of tap.

This weekend, two shows will be offered (one each on Friday and Saturday) at the Southampton Cultural Center, and next Friday, April 29, the troupe dances on the stage of the Avram Theater at Stony Brook Southampton.

Ms. Boyer readily describes herself as a tap teacher who is also a student, and in addition to her own troupe of tappers, the Stony Brook performance will feature dancers from Royalenova Performing Arts in Center Moriches and a performance by New York City-based, Aaron Tolson, (who happens to be Ms. Boyer’s tap teacher), and his company, “Speaking in Taps!”

[caption id="attachment_50265" align="alignright" width="528"] Our Fabulous Variety Show co-founder and teacher Anita Boyer taps it out with her students[/caption]

For Ms. Boyer, the ability to bring tap dancing to the East End through workshops and shows — as well as performances by professionals from the city — is the culmination of a long-term goal.

“I just love tap dancing, and I have been trying for the past five years to figure out how to make tap accessible to anyone and everyone,” explains Ms. Boyer. “It has been kind of tricky because adults don’t want to make a year round commitment and kids do. But then some people may be uncomfortable not being in their age group.”

The key to Ms. Boyer’s success has been flexibility — specifically, her ability to offer tap classes at Southampton Cultural Center through its DanceFusion program, as well as at DanceHampton studio in East Hampton. For aspiring dancers pressed for time, Ms. Boyer has also found that people like workshops with a shorter commitment period and a definitive end goal of a live performance.

Her method seems to be working, and Ms. Boyer has seen her roster of tappers grow to include all age groups in recent years. It helps that tap has gotten downright cool, thanks to the moves of young, dynamic dancers like Savion Glover, and while she does have three boys dancing with her now, she would love to see more of them get involved.

“It’s so hard to attract boys to the dance form. It’s hard for boys who dance,” concedes Ms. Boyer. “If we could find a way to end bullying and get 50/50 participation, I’d be thrilled. Not everyone is good at sports.”

For kids who enjoy dancing when they’re very young, often other commitments, like sports, can end up derailing their efforts once they hit adolescence and are forced to choose one activity over another. That’s exactly what happened to Ms. Boyer, who grew up in Ohio and started on the dedicated “tap track” as a young child, but, like many kids, dropped it once she became a teenager.

“I stopped tap in high school,” she explains. “I had to choose between dance and cross country. I picked cross-county.”

Ms. Boyer now admits that was a major mistake. When she moved to New York after college, she didn’t think it would be a big deal to jump back into tap, so she signed up for a tap class in the city, figuring the old moves would come back to her.

“I walked in and spent the next hour sweating and crying,” admits Ms. Boyer. “I got one step out of 1,000. It was crazy stuff. I got in the car and was driving back home and I was sobbing.”

But when she told her boyfriend, Michael Contino (now her husband) the story of the humiliating class and lamented that she had missed her chance at tap, he was decidedly more pragmatic about her experience,

“He was like, ‘Well, if you learned one thing, try it again,’” recalls Ms. Boyer.

That simple piece of advice was enough to convince Ms. Boyer to get back on the horse, strap on the tap shoes and take a step back, into the advanced beginner class.

She’s been at it ever since.

“There’s so much you can learn at any level of tap no matter how long you’ve been tapping,” she says. “Every teacher has a style and a way of doing moves.”

And that’s the same wisdom she eagerly imparts to her young dancers, because unlike ballet, which has very defined rules and positions, tap is a dance form that developed along the lines of a folk tradition — with moves handed down from one generation to the next. That means there’s no one correct way to do any move, and the only thing that limits a dancer is a fear of trying new things.

“I try to teach my students from my mistakes and things I’ve learned,” says Ms. Boyer. “Because tap was built by a lot of different people without writing it down, everyone has their own way.”

“Tap: An Evening of Rhythm” will be presented this Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23 at 7 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center (25 Pond Lane, Southampton) with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the DanceFusion program at SCC. The show will be offered again on Friday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at Stony Brook Southampton’s Avram Theater (239 Montauk Highway, Southampton) with performances by Royalenova Performing Arts and Aaron Tolson’s “Speaking in Taps” company with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Hamptons Lifelong Arts/Hamptons AARP. Tickets are $25 to $35. Purchase at ourfabulousvarietyshow.org or by calling (631) 594-2906.