Gumbie Cat Choreography

I based my Gumbie Cat Choreography on the piece I did for my mini assessment. I wanted to include tap dancing in it because it is in the original production and it is also something I have been doing since I was 5 years old. 

The original Gumbie Cat, also known as Jennyanydots is known for her caring and motherly nature towards the kittens and other creatures as it says in the song "She is deeply, concerned with the ways of the mice, Their behavior's not good and their manners not nice

So when she has got them lined up on the matting, She teaches them music, crocheting and tatting".  I thought of how to transfer this idea to our concept of the fashion industry and I decided that Jenny should be a mentor for younger models, teaching them how to look great on the catwalk. This gave me the idea for the majority of my choreography. I would have three of the younger models come in to audition to model my new designs, however they are all really bad. Rather than just rejecting them all, Jenny's motherly instincts kick in and she decides instead to mentor them. The tap dance at the end is then a celebration of their sucsess when they walk the catwalk with ease after being taught by her.

When I began teaching my choreography, I decided to start with the tap routine because I knew this would take the longest to learn. Not everyone in the class could do tap so I had to think of steps that were simple to learn for non tappers but also looked effective. The good thing with tap is that it is easy to make look complicated, even if you are doing really simple things. It was most important to me that everyone could do the moves so that we could all be in time as this is a crucial part of tap dancing.

I used lots of shuffles, brushes and front and back taps as these are the simplest steps, but I also added in some more advanced moves such as tap springs and drops so I think this was a challenge for some people. I also found it a challenge for myself as I had never tought tap to anyone before so sometimes I would go to quickly for people.

There was a part in the music that kept stopping and starting. I intitially wanted to use this music for part of my tap solo but it didn't really go with the style. Instead I decided to make this part of the song a fashion show, with people coming down in pairs and doing a pose on every beat. This sounds simple but it was actually quite hard for people to learn as the music sounds very similar so it was hard at first for people to know when to come in. It took a few times to get it right as everyone had to be at the back of the catwalk by a certain time. Then not everyone understood what I meant about the positions at first. In pairs they had to do two positions to the beat, but at first some people took too long doing their poses. But after a few practises people finally got it and I think it looked really effective in the end.