Becky Kalman, Choreographer

I've been "making up dances" since I was seven years old. My friends would come over for a play date and I'd ask them if they wanted to make up a dance with me. We'd create and then show it to our parents at the end of the play date. It was fun. I had no idea that I was being a choreographer. As I got older and started to take my dance training more seriously, I started to understand the concepts of choreography and appreciate it as a creative art form in itself.

This past summer I choreographed a fun, high energy theater dance routine to "Everybody Wants to be Black" from the Broadway hit Memphis. This wasn't for any sort of showcase I was involved in, it was for my own creative satisfaction. I didn't rent out a studio and audition dancers for me to choreograph on. I locked myself in my bedroom, turned the AC up really high, blasted the music from my mac book, and worked it out. I had a ball and am proud of what I created. I'm waiting for an opportunity to do it in front of an audience, or even better, to cast a group of technically advanced dancers/enthusiastic performers and make it a group number.

So today when I found out my afternoon ballet class was cancelled I decided to go to the dance studio anyway, since it would be empty, and play around a bit. I started choreographing a tap routine to KT Tunstall's "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree" a few weeks ago so I figured I'd work on that. Despite the fact that I had to work in my bare feet (we're not allowed to wear tap shoes in this particular studio) I felt the music in my bones and translated the rhythm down to my feet. This is something relatively new for me since I've never choreographed a full length tap number before. Although I started taking tap seriously when I was twelve, I've been in many tap dances, and did 42nd Street with all Broadway choreography, I'm a baby when it comes to the world of tap choreography. Any of my past tap combinations have been maybe thirty-two bars and I never really went anywhere with them. But this time I'm getting into the feel of the music and creating my own "fascinating rhythm" with my feet.

I enjoy choreographing. I think I enjoy it as much as I enjoy performing. I love the feeling I get when I come up with something really cool or different and find a way for it to work in the context of the piece and the music. I would love to have a barrel of dancers at my fingertips to choreograph on. Actually, I kind of do. The Wagner College Theater Department is bursting at the seems with all kinds of talented dancers. Last spring the Dance Club sponsored Dance Week: Dance Across Campus which featured student choreographed pieces all over campus: on the oval, in the student union, in the art gallery, etc... Last year I was in a piece but this year I definitely plan on choreographing something or using something that I've already created and putting dancers in it.