A Question and An Answer

Question: What is the difference between Piazzolla and Mahler?

Answer: No one has ever tap danced to Mahler.

Piazzolla's music is certainly associated with the dance: Tango, yes. Ballet, yes, Belly dancing, yes. Ice dancing, yes. But tap dancing (or step dancing as it is know in some parts of the world) is, so far as I know, relatively rare. Not, mind you, totally unknown. The Japanese violinist, Machiko Ozawa, is known to break into tap dancing in mid-Fracanapa and the Lombard Twins certainly throw a few taps in their creative free-style dancing but this is the first full length tap routine I have seen in a Piazzolla video.

The dancer in the video is Roxane Skobelkina, a teacher of chemistry and a tap dancer by hobby. Her dance was choreographed by Elena Veselovskaya from the Elite School of Tap. In this video she is seen rehearsing for the Russian tapdance Championship in Moscow (May 6th 2009). She won 8th place in that competition and you can see her winning performance here.

Congratulations, Roxane! (And, thanks to Daria for the additional information to my initial posting on the topic.)

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To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.