Dancing Bones

Advanced beginners' tap is, at least for me, more about the advanced than the beginners. There's a lot of fancy footwork, quickly executed. Balance is required. The kind of balance you have in your 20s or 30s but not — ahem — later in life.

Relax your toes, teacher Candy said last night. You need to relax your toes inside your shoes and then you'll be able to move more smoothly. She broke one complicated step down into its components, told us the movement was like a ribbon unfurling.

There were other suggestions —jump down not up, take smaller steps. But the one said most often was "keep smiling." That wasn't hard. The woman next to me was wearing dance tights with skeleton bones. Suddenly I saw a parade of dancing, prancing skeletons, out for a night on the town.