peanut butter taps

We arrived at the theatre unsure if we would even be performing tonight; typhoon Wipha was on her way to Shanghai, about to drop100cm of rain on the partially-evacuated city and, with the imminent hazard of 102km winds about to sweep through town, we had no idea if our stage would be flooded yet, let alone if we would have an audience. But the audience arrived and there was no flooding, and so we set in motion the fixing of pin curls, pre-show warm-ups, and costume pre-sets, all of which meant one thing…the show was going on.

Meanwhile the stage had been re-painted on our day off and the crew was still hard at work re-spiking the entire show (marking the stage for the location of set pieces and props), but one hitch had just shown its face; the stage was not yet dry! It was tacky, to say the least, and standing still for more than five seconds meant that when you did move you could hear the distinct sound of your shoe peeling off the floor. However, in a strange juxtaposition of conditions, in spite of the stage’s stickiness, it also proved unbelievably, surprisingly, and dangerously slippery…but only when you’re wearing tap shoes…which we do a fair amount in this tap…show.

And so just as we finished exchanging uneasy and anxious glances, forcing a smile out so as to not completely lose control over what could potentially go wrong on this ice skating rink of a stage, and now, with the final notes of the overture leading up to our first tap steps of the show, we stood poised, fingers crossed and faces focused on the floor and on the curtain only inches in front of us about to rise, revealing our feet and subsequently the explosion of twenty dancers filling the entire stage. Mere seconds after jumping into the opening time steps, my worrisome expression of apprehension dripped away, slowly fading into one of disbelief and pure, unexpected amusement as I heard the funniest sound I could have never imagined.

It’s the sound of the little kid who just shove a spoonful of peanut butter in his mouth, smacking his lips to his mother’s aggravation; the sound of walking barefoot on the kitchen floor right after it’s been mopped, or walking through that marble hallway in sneakers after escaping from a rainstorm. It’s the sound of walking on wet paint…which is exactly what we were doing…and with every single noise that our taps made (and we make a LOT of noise), with every metallic clink of a shuffle or time step came a new, permeating noise of the tap peeling itself off of the floor. I felt guilty for laughing, especially because we were all doing our best to not slip and fall while “pickin’ ‘em up and layin’ ‘em down” on stage, but the overwhelming sound of twenty tappers literally stuck to a stage was simply too much for me to handle (and I was not the only one holding back a smile…or a laugh).

And it was all down hill from there. From that point on, every time we stood around on stage, listening to a speech or waiting for our next cue to move, you could hear the incessant slurping of shoes, the peeling of soles, and the giggles coming from every corner when someone else shifted their weight or tried to move, realizing their shoe did not want to come with them. For the next two and a half hours we ‘marked’ every step, not wanting to dance full out and therefore fall flat out on the stage, but all the while unable to escape the sound of sticky shoes chasing us from scene to scene, dance number to number, all around stage, never relenting, always mocking and warning us at the same time. Some did not take it so lightly (one even walked off stage during the opening number in a huff), and the conditions were all but desirable, but the show was one to go down in the books…or at least my book…the funny thing is, I guarantee the audience had no clue!