The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
THE ART OF TAP
Cleveland Tap Dance Conservatory opens, has first performance
The sound of tap shoes on Shore Cultural Centre’s hard wooden floors became highly apparent upon walking through the doors of The Cleveland Tap Dance Conservatory.
The new dance group, started by Sarah Savelli and Kandee Hogan, is aimed at providing the art of tap for a new community in Euclid.
Hogan works for NASA as an electrical engineer during the day but at night she trades her schematics for tap shoes. In her role as co-founder of the conservatory, she will be primarily seeking out dancers from the community.
She said she wants to help develop the skills needed for tap dance in people who might already have an interest in or are actively training in other dancing methods.
“I came up on tap dancing in a community center kind of like this,” Hogan said. “So, this for me is an opportunity to get back to the community and get the community interested in tap dance. And try and figure out different ways to do outreach to find people that aren’t as familiar in tap dance but have the potential to be great tap dancers.”
Savelli, whose family owns and operates the Savelli Dance and Martial Arts studio in downtown Willoughby, said that this new Euclid location will be different because it will be entirely devoted to tap dancing. She said they wanted to find new talent in Euclid and found that there weren’t very many options for people who wanted to experience a different type of dance.
“We moved to the new location in downtown Willoughby,” Savelli said before going on stage. “This is an offshoot for tap dancing only, so it’s the primary focus instead of all of the dance forms to kind of specialize a bit. For me it’s more like ‘Tap College.’
“So, it will be a good blend of community, and then they can feed up a level if they want to. We also have a couple of tap dance ensembles so there is definitely places for them to grow. And we tap dance professionally as well.”
Savelli said that with the new Euclid location she wants to provide a space for additional
education when it comes to tap. She said that most dance forms, like ballet, jazz and hip hop, have more options in college education.
She said that many people start dancing in high school and then continue to college, tap dancers, however, have very limited options to continue their artform.
“There is no real college for tap dancing; there is no college program for tap dancing that exists locally,” Savelli said. “So, we are always trying to develop spaces for higher learning in tap dancing. Because you can get to a certain point and there’s not necessarily a place to go.”
They both said that they are happy with their location at the Shore Cultural Centre, 291 E 222nd St., since the floors of the old former high school are made out of nice hard wood for tapping on. She said the benefits don’t stop at the floors.
Hogan said that being located within a space that the community already uses will help gain new followers.
“The Shore Cultural Centre has so many assets to it and so much community involvement it seems like a good place to recruit community members to actually develop them into those dancers so they can get their feet into Sarah’s (Savelli) program,” Hogan added.
More information on future classes and on summer programs can be found at www.digandswivel.com or www.savellidanceandmartialarts.com.