Otago tap dancers performed creditably in Auckland competitions this week, and will be well represented at next weekend's national championships in Invercargill. Bruce Munro delves inside the exacting and sometimes all-consuming world of tap dancing.
The line between dedication and obsession is thin.
It is easily scuffed by the athletic and rhythmical slap, dig, shuffle and knock of tap shoes on the boards under bright lights.
It is a Tuesday afternoon several weeks before tap dancing's two biggest events - the prestigious Auckland Caledonian Dancing Society competitions and the Invercargill-based Performing Arts Competition Association of New Zealand (Pacanz) national young performer awards, both in October.
In a large basement studio in suburban Dunedin, half a dozen children aged 9 to 15 tie laces on tap shoes. They are watched by mothers sitting against walls festooned with framed photos of ever-smiling dancers performing or clutching trophies.
Among racks of costumes filling a large alcove along the back wall, the eponymous founder of the Denise Henderson Studio of Tap is cueing music on a laptop computer connected to a stereo.
The swing-era sound of Michael Buble's All of Me fills the room, bringing Sian Remon (12) to life. The young dancer kicks, slides and spins across the studio's specially constructed wooden floor.
The metal "taps" on the front and back of her shoes ring with syncopated, percussive energy; her toes, heels, legs, torso, arms, hands and head recreating the many dozens of choreographed, practised and memorised movements that make up just this one of several routines she is learning.
Tap dance requires dedication, Denise Henderson says.
"I'm very blunt. I say, don't come to me if you just want to drop off and pick up [your child] and not do anything else during the week," she says.
"If you've got a talented child who loves performing, then they really need a parent who will support that. A lot of parents can't commit to that."
With its roots in African-American slave dance forms fused with European foot dances, particularly Irish stepdancing, tap is all about making music with your feet.
In this way it is more like singing or piano than other dance forms, Ms Henderson says.
"It's one-on-one with the teacher, and involves developing routines which have to be practised at home.""Tap mother" Sallie Remon, of Milton, watches attentively, notebook in hand.
Her job is to write down all the steps and body movements during the half-hour lesson and then make sure Sian practises four days a week at home.
Her daughter has seven dance routines to stay on top of, "and she's always learning a new one".
The same goes for her eldest daughter Kerry (15) and son Jake (9) who have also been learning tap since they were 7 years old.
"The commitment is pretty huge," Mrs Remon says.
"Leading up to competitions they will be practising every day.
"It's difficult when they are tired and don't want to practise ... [but] it keeps them well entertained and they enjoy the competition."
It has become a whole-family affair, with husband Paul regularly making and transporting stage props for various routines.
Tap dancing is a visual art form using the whole body, so costumes are an important element.
Thirty years ago most tap mothers did not work full-time and could sew, Ms Henderson says. Now, out of 65 mothers involved in her tap studio, three make their own children's costumes.
So, three times a year Ms Henderson brings dressmaker Christine Wedlake down from Timaru for a month. Sleeping and working in a windowless room adjoining the dance studio, she spends her days creating costume after costume.
"They call me Josef Fritzl for keeping her here," Ms Henderson quips.
For Ms Henderson, teaching tap is the continuation of a lifetime dedicated to dance and performance.
She began tap dancing when she was 6 years old, under the tutelage of Maureen Fleming and then Wendy McKay, both of Dunedin, and later Ken Wright, of Christchurch.
She danced competitively until she was 18 and has been teaching tap for the past 31 years.
"I love watching a really rhythmical dancer, and I get inspired by clever choreography," she says.
She has had leading roles in several musicals in Otago, and last year directed the Taieri Musical Society production of My Fair Lady.
Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin continue to be the strongholds of tap in New Zealand, though the numbers of children involved are much lower than the "ginormous" cohorts of the 1970s, she says.
Sixty-four children took part in last month's Dunedin Tap Dancing Society competitions.
Four decades ago there would have been three times as many.
"Parents today seem so starved of time. It's evident throughout society," she says.
During the past 11 biennial Pacanz tap competitions, Ms Henderson's pupils have been finalists 16 times, including three second places.
The most recent was Georgia Balloch, who was second in 2010 and is now completing studies at the Ministry of Dance, in Melbourne, Australia.
Ms Henderson's weekday mornings are spent on studio administration, choreography, editing music and costume design. Teaching begins straight after school and does not finish until 8pm. On Saturdays she teaches from 9.30am until 6pm.
Before school each morning she oversees her daughter Lara Davidson's tap practice, and then does not see her again "until ... I put her to bed".
"It's a big, big commitment ...
"It takes over an enormous amount of your life," she says.
"I couldn't do it if I didn't have a great husband who cooks dinner and does a lot of the other work around the place.
"Sometimes he says, come upstairs, have a glass of wine and don't talk about tap.
"It's great. You need that sane person in your life."
Sanity does seem to tread lightly at times in the world of tap.
In Dunedin tap circles there is the legendary but true story of the flying frozen fowl. In the early 1980s a dispute between two competitive tap mothers turned ugly when one threw a frozen chicken at the other in a supermarket.
"There's been a few crazies through my door," Ms Henderson says.
"They are just excessive about their child and can have an unrealistic view of their child's abilities."
But she believes, contrary to tap's reputation for being "full of psycho mothers", that all artistic endeavours and sporting codes have their over-zealous members.
Alison Trewern, of Dunedin, admits to possibly being a former member of that group.
Her daughter Shanna Breman-Trewern (22) tap danced from the age of 4 until she was 18.
Shanna won her first solo dance prize when she was 7 years old, and then numerous other trophies, before taking the senior song and dance title as a 16-year-old at New Zealand's biggest annual tap event, the Auckland Caledonian Dancing Society competitions.
"Shanna just loved tap," Mrs Trewern says.
"She liked to win. She doesn't like being number two."
Mrs Trewern accompanied her daughter to weekly lessons, hour-long practices in a school hall four days a week, and to competitions throughout the lower South Island every third weekend.
She also joined a tap-dancing committee and helped with local competition results.
"It becomes your life. It's all you think about," she says.
"My friends would call it crazy. When it was tap season they would stay away."
But when her daughter stopped tap dancing, Mrs Trewern lost interest too.
"How immensely crazy was I to be so intense about something like that?
"... It's really weird when I look back."
Excesses aside, tap dance offers many rewards, Ms Henderson says.
"Tap itself is entertaining and clever. But mostly I love what it gives the children - opportunities and self-confidence."
Isaac Chirnside (15), of Dunedin, has won dozens of trophies in the past nine years.
He appreciates the discipline tap develops and the self-expression it allows.
"When you are happy you can express that, and when you are angry you can tap hard," he says.
Lara Davidson (13), also a top local tap dancer, loves "getting up on stage and performing for people".
She hopes one day to be the leading lady in big musical shows, so is also learning ballet and singing.
"It helps to have everything," she says.
Shanna Breman-Trewern, who is on an OE in Europe, says growing up in Dunedin's tap-dancing community was "like growing up in a giant dysfunctional family".
"However, I would not have wished to grow up any other way," she says.
"Tap dancing and the strong empowering woman that taught me this art have turned me into the confident, independent and strong young woman I am today."
Parents also get a lot from it, Amanda Inglis-Flaws, whose daughter Temple Flaws (10) learns tap, says.
"As a tap mum, I love it. It fills me with pride seeing her out there," Mrs Inglis-Flaws says.
"It's all that girly, sparkly thing - hair and make-up and costume ... It's like having a living doll. That sounds terrible and so American, but it's true."
And while the amount of time involved means she has to work hard to ensure her other two children get enough of her attention, Mrs Inglis-Flaws says she "wouldn't give it up for anything".
"I know Temple loves it. She lives to perform and I just glow in adoration ... I'm in awe of how beautifully she dances." But the rewards only come to those who put in the effort.
"You can't fake tap dancing.
"It's a skill acquired over many years," Denise Henderson says.
So today, and for as many tomorrows as it takes, they will keep learning, and practising, and performing.
In the dance studio, as music restarts and a tap dancer repeats their routine, Ms Henderson continues her tuition.
"Just decide to be confident.
"Don't hide away from selling it," she says.
"Smile. That's it. Give me more, give me more."
