Traveling for Tap

Photo by Reilly Moreland

It’s 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning and junior Kayla Starns and her mother are heading to LA for tap. The two have been traveling once a month since January this year for Starns to tap dance in the Sole Talk Company for five hours and return the same evening.

Whether it’s in the studio or under a desk at school, Starns always finds herself practicing kickbacks and wings. Over the past 10 years, she has promenaded across the dance floor as well as tapped to the beat of “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman. This year Starns decided to quit competition dance and perform with a Los Angeles-based tap company known as “#NoFilter Sole Talk.”

Starns is not only taking technique classes at Liberation Dance Company, but also traveling to California for the company to further her training.

Towards the end of November, Starns found a post on instagram about the Sole Talk tap group. The company is semi-professional, meaning a part time position for experienced dancers. This offer was instantly appealing to her because she’d been looking for a way to continue tap dancing after quitting competitive dance in July.

Once in LA, the select group of 40-50 teenagers learn a roughly two-and-a-half minute long routine during the five hour practices.

After just two practices, the group already has an upcoming performance. Starns is looking forward to performing at the DC Tap Festival with the company, which takes place March 23-25 in Washington, D.C.

At the D.C. Tap Fest, Starns will dance a total of 20 hours in a single weekend. The first night she will perform alongside the company and the rest of the weekend will be a tap convention, which is a series of classes taught by professional dancers.

With practices only being once a month, Starns said that it’s important that members of the company continue to practice on their own while they’re back home. In order to stay on par with the team by perfecting the new routine, Starns has continued to take technique classes at Liberation Dance Company so she stays in a routine of dancing six hours every week.

Up until freshman year, she was paranoid about what other dancers would think and spent her time dancing in the back corner of the studio to avoid attention. Starns thinks that what made her break out of her shell most was the different “homework assignments” given to the dancers while in Los Angeles.

Homework assignments including posting an improv video of her favorite song along with an explanation of why she found it inspirational.

Starns’s tap instructor at Liberation Dance Company, Crystal Robbins, said she enjoys having Starns in class because of her dedication and passion to improve, even when class is filled with burpees and crunches.

“She works hard and it’s always just nice to have her in class,” Robbins said. “She has a very positive attitude and has fun while [dancing].”

Starns mother, Melonie, thinks that in addition to becoming a better dancer, being apart of such a prestigious company in Los Angeles with dancers from different states has taught her many important skills including confidence, stage presence and persistence.

“I think dance teaches perseverance,” Melonie said. “You have to keep at something until you get it.”

Whenever learning a new step, it’s important to never miss a sound, as well as be able to perform in sync with your group to the beat of the music. For this reason Starns would catch herself performing new steps down the bread aisle of the grocery store until she knew the step by heart.

Starns agrees with her mother and thinks the company has achieved their goal of bringing more confidence into her everyday life by no longer caring about what people will think when she makes a bold move in an improv or gives a fierce facial expression. She says being able to perform in front of an audience has given her a confidence boost.

“I really just like how you are able to express who you are through dance and movement,” Starns said. “I’m not very vocal about anything, so it’s really a cool way to express who you are.”

Starns said that she is able to show who she is through dance when a song is played and she just lets her body move through the music, allowing herself to dance the way she feels.

Although Starns isn’t planning on pursuing dance after high school, she will continue dancing for the next year and a half.

While Starns’s tap dancing will be coming to a close when she goes to college, she will be still flying across the country and tap dancing through Sunday afternoons just to spend her last few classes doing what she loves.