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May 27, 2005
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| Brothers Andy and Rick Ausland are the co-creators of Ten Foot Five, a drum and tap group that's injecting new enthusiasm into the Twin Cities tap scene. (Image courtesy of Ten Foot Five Productions) |
Minneapolis, Minn. — On a recent night at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis, three tap companies in the Twin Cities came together to show off some of their most recent work.
The energy in the room bumped up a notch towards the end of the concert, when a group of young tappers came on stage with a bunch of empty plastic buckets.
After a high-powered set of drumming on buckets and cans, they then jumped up and started tapping with just as much feverish enthusiasm. This is Ten Foot Five, a group dedicated to rhythm, whether it comes out of your hands or your feet.
Brothers Rick and Andy Ausland started the group with three friends back in 1997 - five dancers, 10 feet. Their performances are highly improvised and filled with some amazing moves. At one point Andy Ausland breaks out into a series of pirouettes, leaps into the air, and lands in the splits.
Ellen Keane of Keane Sense of Rhythm organized the tap celebration concert. She says Ten Foot Five is bringing new excitement to the art form.
"I think they're doing a lot to turn people on to the art of tap dance, to bring it out to the streets, to make it accessible," says Keane. "They're producing all the time - they're doing shows and out there making everybody aware that there is a tap scene here so they're contributing great amounts to the whole tap community."
On a weekday morning the Ausland brothers are rehearsing for yet another series of concerts coming up at the Southern Theater, along with company member Kaleena Miller. Miller first saw Ten Foot Five perform when she was sixteen. She says she joined Ten Foot Five because it was tapping in a completely different way from the other companies in town.
"It's a lot more improvisational," says Miller. "Other shows it's like, 'well you'll improv here for four bars and then we'll do this routine.' It's getting so more like that with this show, but the first couple shows I did with [Ten Foot Five] I came to the show not knowing what the heck was going to happen. That was stressful at first but now it's ok."
Rick and Andy Ausland's mom is a dancer and their dad is a drummer. Andy Ausland says his mother got him into tap classes when he was just three.
"She thought it would be really cute if I tapped for her at a recital with a big bow tie on. But then I threw away the bow tie and started connecting it with the roots of rhythm and the essence of why we're all here. And that's our heartbeat, our rhythm in our heart," says Ausland.
The Ausland brothers have been drumming for as long as they've been dancing. Often they'll hang out at a Twins Game and play buckets on the sidewalk afterwards. Rick Ausland says it's all connected.
"You're either drumming with your hands or drumming with your feet. Sometimes we'll do both, but it's all the same," says Ausland. "Really we're just playing drums all the time. Even when we're tap dancing we're playing the floor like it's a drum."
American tap springs from both African drumming and jazz rhythms. Early American tappers combined their footwork with Irish and British clogging steps to create a style called "buck and wing," and in the mid 19th century, modern tap dance was born. The Ausland brothers say they're trying to capture some of that original edginess of tap, while still staying true to their own personal styles of self-expression. Rick Ausland says the response has been great.
"It's really positive. It seems like sometimes there are kids that wouldn't really have thought about dance before and we do a show and now they understand something," says Ausland. "There's some sort of expression that they can grab onto and they'll even start doing it right there in front of us."
Rick Ausland says he and the rest of Ten Foot Five are having so much fun when they dance, he believes that positive energy is flowing right out into the audience. He hopes it stays with them well after the concert, and inspires them.
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