She's So Innocent

My adult tap class had a substitute teacher this week, an adorable, extremely talented......seventeen year-old.  The two regulars are there, 60-something year-old ("P"), and I. "L" wasn't told anything about the class and had no idea what to expect.  She didn't even have the music for our "routine".  She asked us what we wanted to do, and both of us said, "Whatever you want.  We could work on our routine, learn new combos, etc etc."  A very brief and simple warm-up was how we began.  Then "L" asked us to show her our routine, without the music.  Not too far into it, "L" finds something she wants to help us with, a one-footed pick-up.  This step is very quick and thrown in as an embellishment during a bigger step.  I can do it about 50% of the time, and I'm happy with that.  "L" demonstrates - "You do it like this."  I laugh.  I know how it's supposed to look, and how it's done, I just can't do it.  If I could do it all the way across the floor like she demonstrated, then I would have 100% consistency with it in the routine.

""P and I run the routine again, and "L" stops us.  "You're not as crisp as you could be."  Again I have to laugh...."We sound good when our teacher dances with us."  Obviously, our teacher is louder than we are, and her taps are all we hear.  So I think, "Damn, I sound good!" 

Finally, "L" made my favorite comment of the evening:  "You're much better than I thought you would be for an adult class."  I almost died laughing because I knew she truly meant it as a compliment.  She is, after all, only 17.