Watch: I learned to tap dance with the star of Top Hat at the Edinburgh Playhouse
Top Hat is playing at the Edinburgh Playhouse until Saturday
I am wearing a top hat and tap shoes. I step out onto the illuminated stage of Scotland’s biggest theatre with leading man Phillip Attmore. We pose and begin to dance. The crowd goes wild.
It is all true, apart from the last sentence. The Edinburgh Playhouse auditorium is actually empty, save for a few backstage staff, including the head of wardrobe for touring musical Top Hat, who is there to ensure that I don’t damage his hat - or cane.
Attmore, who has kindly agreed to give me a tap tutorial between shows, is playing Jerry Travers, the iconic part originally played by Fred Astaire in the 1935 film of Irving Berlin musical Top Hat, which also starred Ginger Rogers. We try some poses from the show, using the hats and canes.
Growing up in LA, Attmore has been a performer since he was a small child.
“I started when I was three,” he says. “I have a brother and sister who are both older and who were artistically inclined. My parents started to have a sneaking suspicion that I might have been bitten by the bug, so they tried me with dancing and got lucky the first time.”
Attmore adds: “I knew I wanted to be on Broadway. I grew up watching Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and the song and dance men and women and incredible song and dance performers and I am living the dream in terms of being able to become the type of performer I used to dream about becoming.”
He decides to train me in the dance that his character teaches his manager in the show.
It is, he says, a “simple timestep”.
He’s right, of course. It is basic Tap 101. If you go into any children’s dance school in Scotland, you’ll probably find hordes of five-year-olds executing the step with ease.
Not me, though. I haven’t learned tap since I was three. Attmore, by contrast, took up tap as a three-year-old and has not stopped since.
“A timestep is a staple,” he says. “You learn it as a baby, but baby to professional, everyone does a timestep because it’s so classic. I think a lot of it is remembering that in tap dancing, you’re also a musician. You’re playing music as well, so getting used to the musicality is a very important factor.”
It looks so simple, but there are a lot of moving parts. If I stamp with that foot, I then need to hop with the other before performing a flap - a sort of shuffle - which I never quite get the hang of, but manage to fudge so I think - hope - Attwood doesn’t notice. I am also trying not to look at my feet.
I occasionally get on the wrong foot, which ruins the symmetry. I’m just glad he didn’t suggest adding the cane to the mix.
Attwood starts to complicate things by adding an extra running step known as trenches, then a spin and a dip. Somehow, we make it through a take that even I have to admit doesn’t look too terrible.
Our videographer wonders aloud if we can do the dance with music. Attwood has an easy solution.
“I’ll sing [the song] Top Hat while we dance,” he suggests. I have no idea how he does it, but he does. I suppose it’s his job. It’s a bit like me writing a story about tap dancing while simultaneously listening to a Holyrood committee meeting online.
Multi-tasking.
Top Hat is at the Edinburgh Playhouse until Saturday.
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