A Tap Party

The sort of birthday party I give my children is the one where you provide sweet stuff to eat and drink, a fancy birthday cake and some space for the little darlings to run around in. But I'm practically a luddite in this regard, because giving your child an extra-special party is what we like to do in Melbourne. There are so many options for the birthday child. Bowling parties, play centre parties, cooking parties, fairy parties, karate parties (I love that one, only 'cos it rhymes) and swimming parties. Or if you want to stay at home you can hire a fairy or a magician, a jumping castle or a fire-truck. The list goes on. As a mother I've witnessed quite a lot of these parties and my boys have both had themselves a good time as attendees. But when I got a call a few months ago to ask if I could "do" a Tap Dancing Party for a soon-to-be 7 year old, I really wasn't sure. For a start, doing a party each per year for my own children tuckers me out. And then, I've been to enough mass parties with an unruly mob of youngsters (mostly boys, which can get v-e-r-y unruly) to have felt pity for the person in charge of the little party-goers. I have actively thought I'm glad that's not me doing that.

But a job's a job. So I didn't flat out refuse. I had a little think instead. I thought about venue and price, ways and means. My tap school operates out of a community centre, where there is a No Parties Policy. Well, they let me hold my big party there but that was a special occasion. I didn't feel like pulling in special favours for this gig, especially when I realised that that would mean I'd have to be there early to unlock and no doubt involved in cleaning up prior to locking up too. I hate cleaning up. So I couldn't cut her the sort of deal I think she was hoping for, where she brought the kids and the party food to my place. I also researched what a fairy would charge to work her magic at a party (and got the ammunition for this post at the same time) and calculated if that was enough money to get me out of bed. And I decided it was, if I could do it on my terms.

So I said:

• I'll come to a venue of your providing (must have wooden floor) for one hour.
• I'll play tap dance based games.
• I'll have some little slip-on tap plates for them to wear on their feet.
• I'll make up and teach them a special routine.
• I'll charge this much money.

And rather to my surprise (I'm not cheap!) this was all agreed to. Fortunately the Mum is a terribly nice woman (and her daughter is delightful as well) so she was thoughtful enough to ask if there were limits to the number of guests, something I'd not thought to stipulate, which meant that I was able to say that bringing more than 15 guests would necessitate an assistant and that that would cost her extra. After more talks, we set an upper limit of 20 guests as a manageable total, but, as you do, she invited a few more thinking some would not be able to make it. Every single child she invited, including the little friend from Adelaide, decided to come. Which made 22, but that was okay.



In fact, and this is partly because they were such a nice bunch of children, it didn't matter at all. With my glamorous assistant, the lovely Miss Kaye, on board, (she spent the first part of the party being awesome dealing with the my tap-plates have broken! calls* that rang round the room, turns out araldite wasn't quite strong enough and lucky I brought along my trusty roll of gaffer tape) we turned up to a hired hall -with a wooden floor- and proceeded to give those children a tap party. It was fun. We played a few games that sneakily also introduced tap concepts like digs and knocks and jumps and stamps. We pieced together some moves. A few of them started to wilt round the edges and Kaye whispered in my ear that a drink break would be a good thing. When they were refreshed we took all the bits they'd learned, and assembled them into a routine. Then we ran it through once. Some of the wilty edge-stragglers thought it was all over then, but No! I'm sorry, we can't let you have birthday cake unless you do it Once More With Feeling! (I wish I could say that to all my tap students.)

The birthday girl had a lovely party and I think all her friends did too. And guess what? I enjoyed myself too.



*They didn't all break I hasten to add, Mister Fixit is handier than that! One in five maybe? And you know, it 's noticeable that it was mostly the boys' ones that did break...