Subject Matter welcomes all comers at Lilypad on Saturday, 22 February 2025.

A Tap Dance Jam is like an open mic. For tap dancing.

Obviously.

Shout out to the Dan Masi mural, coming into focus on the wall stage right at the Lilypad.

Dropping in my writeup from my Cambridge Day gig below.

Subject Matter hosted a Tap Dance Jam at Inman Square last Saturday. Think of it as an “open mic,” except it’s for dance, and you won’t have to listen to a divorced 40-something strum Nirvana’s “Rape Me” on his overpriced acoustic.

Company member and choreographer Ian Berg stepped in as emcee for the night. Reluctantly, he’d have us believe. “Someone’s gotta do it.” But the lady doth protest too much. You don’t own a pair of tap shoes because you’re bashful about getting up in front of a crowd.

Berg was joined by fellow company member and dance captain (and fiancée) Samantha Emmond. With the help of a jazz trio, the dancers kicked off the festivities with a back-and-forth tap number to the tune of Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce.”

The floodgates opened after the bounce. Tall tappers, short tappers, young tappers, old tappers. Anyone with metal plates on their shoe bottoms was invited to strut their stuff atop three adjoining stone slabs, forming a slightly-raised dais above Lilypad’s standard hardwood stage.

“Had I known it was an open mic, I would have worn a type of footwear other than my heaviest, clunkiest winter boots and joined in the tap fun” is not a sentence that is remotely true. But there were plenty of vicarious thrills to be enjoyed for the permanently sedentary portion of the audience. And no wait at the beer line.

If you missed the Jam, no worries, more are on their way. Search the usual listings for Subject Matter events. And you can donate to Ian and Samantha’s registry before their August wedding. They want a house. You can buy them one. Or a $15 “bench scraper,” if you’re a real cheapskate.

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