Tap Dance

Tap at Sugar Swing is top notch! While our instructors are always proficient and professional, their goal is to have you enjoy the learning process and the material that you learn. The focus tends to be less on completing full pieces of choreography and more on teaching tap combinations, fundamentals, and mini-routines, thus enabling you to break out into a tap your heart out!

Our classes are offered in convenient 4-5 week parts, forming a 12- or 15- week semester starting in January, May, and September. If you are new to tap and fear difficulty, check out our Tap 1A class offered at the start of each semester. If you have a considerable amount of experience, the Tap 2 through 4 levels will definitely satisfy your craving for challenge. Not sure? Talk to us — often we will refer you to our instructors, and they will recommend a good place for you to grow.

Here’s a few reasons why you’ll love our tap classes:

Adult Classes… come if you’re 15, 25, or 95!
No tap shoes required!

Fun Classes

Get both technical training, and learn great routines!
Easy-going atmosphere among both students and instructors.
No pressure to perform or compete!

Other Features

Email updates to keep you in the loop.
Small class sizes equals better learning.
Great venue centrally located, with hardwood!
Competitive prices, look nowhere else.

Our Tap program is currently geared toward beginners to intermediate-advanced tap dancers. We run each class for 1hr 10m.

Tap 1: Beginner

Everyone starts here from scratch! Our beginner classes cover the fundamentals from the ground-up. Learn the iconic shim sham, along with the basic components of shuffle, flap, stomps, stamps, and more. This is a great series to start off with! We go through the entire semester with increasingly progressive material, building off the fundamentals and forming cute little sequences and routines.

Newcomers – Tap 1A is best for complete newcomers, and is typically offered in September and January. We don’t recommend beginners to start mid-semester, unless you have done tap before, or have taken other dance forms. If you do join, just know that they move at a faster pace!

Tap 1.5: Beginner+

We sometimes offer Tap 1.5 when there are beginners who aren’t quite ready for Tap 2, but don’t need to start from scratch.

Tap 2: Beginner-Intermediate

After having completed level 1 and are feeling really confident with that material, you can to consider our Tap 2 classes! This class is definitely challenging but you will gain so much by being here.

There is focus on technique and variations on rhythm turns, learning some tricks (such as pick-ups/pullbacks and wings), along with variations on fundamentals of cramp rolls and paradiddles. Our instructor brings teachings from historical repertoire to her students – it’s a great class!

Seasoned Tappers – The Tap 2 classes typically consists of dancers who have a decent amount of tap experience, perhaps having danced throughout their youth.

Tap 3: Intermediate and Intermediate-Advanced

Here’s where students learn lengthier routines of increased difficulty. There are often pickups, pullbacks, and wings thrown into the combos, plus here’s where you get to start doing syncopations!

Tap 4: Advanced

At this level, your ability to learn combos is FAST. Memorizing routines is fairly straight forward, and you’ve learned many-a time step. Often, dancers have been at it for 5 or more years with consistent practice throughout. Syncopated pull-backs and wings are something that Tap 4 students can normally do!