How to practice the basic skills of tap dance

　　When dancing tap dance, you must first move your feet. The feet mainly use the ankle joint, so we first practice stretching the feet, then turn the ankles inward and outward, shake the knees, relax the knee joints, and then do:

　　1. Knee joint bending and arm swing exercises (feet with all palms on the ground).

　　2. Single-arm swing exercise (others are the same as above).

　　3. Jumping exercises with both feet (use the balls of your feet, keep your heels on the ground, and swing your arms naturally).

　　4. Turn your body 90 degrees and clap your hands to practice (turn and jump first, then clap your hands).

　　rhythm practice

　　1. When there is music in tap dance, you must follow the rhythm to find a beat, a half beat, or even a quarter beat.

　　2. When there is no music, your feet are music and rhythm.

　　Music rhythm exercises:

　　1. One-beat practice: Any music we listen to has one, two, three, and four beats. When practicing, we beat one beat with our feet, two beats with our hands, three beats with our feet, and four beats with our hands.

　　2. Half-beat practice: beat with your feet for the first half of the beat, and with your hands for the second half of the beat, namely one, two, three, and four.

　　3. Quarter beat practice: beat the front quarter beat with your feet, and beat the last three-quarter beats with your hands three times.

　　That is: one datada, two datada, three datada, and four datada.

　　Or: one da da da da, two da da da da, one da da da da, four da da da da.

　　Regular practice while listening to music in this way will make people feel that you have stepped on the second half of the music.

　　Let’s do another set of exercises like this now:

　　One-up and two-up (one beat) One-up and one-up (half a beat) One-up and one-up (half a beat).

　　straight kick exercise

　　Straight tapping actually requires the feeling of the ankle joint and the sound of tapping the floor with the sole of the foot. However, it is not just a tap dance that can be done by just putting on tap shoes. It must use the power of the ankle joint to tap. When you practice the ankle to be as flexible as the wrist, your tap dance will be practiced. Therefore, when practicing, lift the heel first, then the toes, hook the foot, tap the floor with the sole of the foot, lift it immediately after tapping, and tap repeatedly like this.

　　During practice, the knee joint should not be extended too straight. It should always be bent and relaxed. Practice with both feet alternately. During practice, the muscles on the feet should be relaxed and not too tight. They will be used in many places in our tap dance in the future.

　　During the exercise, only the ankle joint of the foot is used, that is, move the right foot forward no more than one foot away, tap the ground with the left foot seven times, take the foot back (stomp) on the eighth beat, then switch to the right foot and tap seven times on the eighth beat, retract the stomp.

　　To tap dance well, you must first practice straight tapping. This is a very important basic skill that must be practiced every day. It can be practiced anytime and anywhere regardless of the venue.

　　walking exercises

　　Tap dance is very beautiful and the sound is very crisp, but you must learn it from the beginning. In the elementary level, we arranged it so that everyone can understand the sound of various parts of the foot hitting the ground and the changes in the rhythm of various music. Therefore, walking is a very important exercise. We introduce two types here, one is the toe belly rhythm and heel strike (the toe belly is the sole of the foot) ； Toes are toes) First practice the toe belly rhythm and strike in place, and then practice the moving toe belly rhythm and strike. It can go forward, backward, left, right or cross. When doing heel exercises, your knees should still be bent and should not be straightened.

　　The second type is to attack the toe belly joint, which is exactly the opposite of the first type. When performing a heel strike, rub the ground with your heels. When performing a toe-belly beat, use your body's strength to press on your knees, and then make a sound from your knees to the soles of your feet (a very crisp and heavy sound).

　　When walking, the legs should be relatively straight, and when shooting, the legs should be bent relative to each other, that is, walking straight and bending when shooting.