Tap Dancing Warmups: Hop Steps

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Emily Larew, and we're going to look at hop steps in different syncopations. Alright, so you might be thinking "Hm...a hop step, how hard can that be, anyone can skip, right"? Well sometimes we're not focused on being off our heels because in tap it's very important that we're not all the time down into the flats of our feet, like clogging, clogging is really flatfooted. So in this exercise, as we're warming up our feet, I want you to really focus and be on the balls of your feet. You want to make sure that we're hearing two sounds all the time, so we're just going to take it nice and easy, regular hop steps, no extra little things going on here. So we have hop, step, hop, step, again my knees are bent and I'm on the balls of my feet, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step. And it just is a little good warm up to get your heart rate going and making sure that you can hear the sounds as you're doing your hop steps. We could also do, you can add them into hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step. And really make sure that you're focusing on digging into the floor, pressing the ball of your foot into the floor as you're doing your hop steps. And again, that was hop steps in different syncopations."