Here is one of the light weight tap dancing surfaces used for during the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. No, I was not a participant. I bought this board on eBay.
I know the opening ceremony is one the most important parts of the Olympics, with a large TV audience around the world. It makes such a big statement for the host country, I am sure. I am not interested in sports at all however, so I pay almost no attention to the Olympics when it comes around, even though everyone else seems to be glued to their TV screens. In 2000, a few days after the Sidney Games started, one of my students told me that the opening ceremony had included a big tap number. “What did I think about it?” I was asked. Of course, I had missed the entire event. I mean, how should I know?
I asked all my tap buddies if they recorded the TV broadcast, but nobody taped it. Many months later I bought this tap board from eBay auction. The seller was Australian and I told him I had not seen the tap dancing number, even though I was buying one of the dancing surface panels. He was very kind and sent me a tape along with the aluminum board.
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The center of the big stage rose and there was one tap dancer, Adam Garcia, who was in the movie "Bootmen". He start tapping without music, Then 16 dancers joined him in typical Tap Dogs style. Then hundreds of dancers appeared all over the stadium each carrying one of these tap dance boards; not only tap dancers (500 tap dancers!) but some jazz dancers (500 jazz dancers!) and Australian native dancers as well;500 more. Tremendous! What a spectacle and it climaxed with fireworks spelling out " SIDNEY ".
What I found amazing is that the producers found 500 tap dancers in Australia who could learn this choreography so well. The choreography was not for beginners. So the producers can't bring just anybody in from any old tap studio in Australia. To me that was amazing. And even though the choreography was lead by Tap Dogs guys, they didn't act like they are the stars of the show. All the dancers were in unison. Unity is the theme of Olympics after all, right?
This tap dancing surface is about 32 inches square. It's very thin, but it doesn't bend at all. It's made of aluminum and weighs about 5Kg. There are little wholes on each side to hold it. It is about 5 kg. One side is very flat but the other side is stamped with a rugged industrial texture. When I watched the video tape of the ceremony, I could see the dancers are tap dancing on that textured side. I thought the dancers' shoes, or maybe their toe taps would get stuck in this textured surface but actually I found it very easy to dance on this board after all.
