No Rules, Just Dance: The Lombard Twins, Teaching Tap on Their Own Terms
In the 1980s in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a pair of bright-eyed identical twins huddled around a tiny black and white television set. They had to hit it with their fists just to make it work. When they finally got a clear picture, they backed up slightly to get a better look at the American movie their mother insisted they watch. The 7-year-old brothers sat there mesmerized and slightly dumbfounded because they had never seen anything quite like it before. Who was this man, Gregory Hines, they wondered? How was he making music with his feet? But even more perplexing, how was he able to express himself through dance?
As the twins watched “The Cotton Club,” they found themselves listening carefully to the sounds of Hines’ taps and replaying them back in their heads. They listened some more, until the rhythms were inside their bodies, pulsating through their legs and feet. They began to move, at first not making out any real tap sounds, just imitating the movements they saw on television. But as they grew older, tap began to follow until the boys were doing shuffles and cramp rolls right in their sneakers.
Now, these identical brothers are all grown up, performing, teaching and tapping to their own unique rhythm. Martin and Facundo Lombard have appeared in music videos and print advertisements;, they have performed as guest artists with numerous companies, and they have even toured internationally with their own full-length stage show called Dreamers. Their gifted feet have taken them around the world and back, affording them opportunities they never thought possible. The Lombard Twins have certainly come a long way since their humble beginnings in Argentina, but the journey has not always been easy. Without enough money for formal training, they never set foot in a dance studio as children.
But Martin and Facundo refuse to call themselves prodigies; the twins attribute their tap prowess to a different, more unorthodox kind of training, which has had a direct influence on the kind of teachers they are today. While they admit they never took lessons, they were fortunate enough to grow up in a musical home where they were encouraged to watch classic American dance movies. As young kids, they were introduced to the great tap masters of the past like Sammy Davis Jr., Buster Brown, Jimmy Slyde and Gregory Hines, from whom they would eventually learn the true fundamentals of rhythm tap.
photo by Wyoming Telford
Still, some of their dance talent is undoubtedly inherent. Before their introduction to tap, they idolized Michael Jackson, often imitating his signature moves while finding new ways to put their own twist on it. They practiced every day, whether in their bedroom, in the front of the television, or in the street with their neighborhood friends. By the time they were teenagers, the self-taught twins had mastered the basics of hip-hop, while tap was still a mysterious foreign language.
At the age of 13, Martin and Facundo made their television debut dancing on local variety show called “Rhythm of the Night.” After completing their 32-episode engagement, they knew they were destined to perform and began seeking out new ways to express themselves as artists. They immersed themselves in all things dance, stumbling almost serendipitously upon the movie that would ultimately change their lives. “We were doing the hip-hop style, but then we found the movie ‘Tap.’ It was with all the hoofers like Jimmy Slyde, Arthur Duncan, Harry Nicholas, Steve Condos, all of them were there, even Sammy Davis Jr,” recalls Facundo.
But it was none other than Gregory Hines who again left a lasting impression on the twins. Martin remembers how he and his brother felt the first time they saw Hines in “Tap”: “We thought, we want to be just like him, but we were only 15 or 16 and didn’t tap. We didn’t know why we wanted to be like him, we just did.” Facundo elaborates, “It was his emotion. He brought something different that we never saw before.”
The twins did not forget about Hines, but without any tap opportunities nearby, they continued focusing on their hip-hop skills. In addition, they had begun composing their own music, but for a reason they could not understand, they still felt unfulfilled artistically. In their late teens, still unsure how to satiate their hunger for art, they decided to revisit the work of Gregory Hines in “Tap,” the movie that had left them so awestruck just a few years earlier. Suddenly, as they watched the film for the second time, they had an epiphany. The Lombard Twins decided they would teach themselves how to tap dance, no matter how impossible it may have seemed.
“I finally felt like I could do it,” Martin reveals. “Gregory Hines was doing a paddle and roll and for me it was 4 four sounds. It’s a heel, then a toe, hit it backwards and then toe again and then heel. And then he did a shuffle with the left – I didn’t know it was a shuffle, of course – but I knew how many sounds. To me it was mathematic. It was about listening to the music. I would go duck-a-da-duck-a-da-duck-a-da, but think to myself, no, it needs another sound there. So that’s how we figured it out.”
When the twins were just 20 years old, they left behind friends and family in their native Argentina and moved to the United States, the birth place of tap dance. But without enough money for classes, Martin and Facundo knew they were going to have to do things the old fashioned way. If they wanted to really learn tap, they would have to go directly to the source. And in the late 90s, that meant the grandson of tap dance. It meant Savion Glover.
It was August 2, 1998 and the twins had just landed on the island. Their first stop in New York City: the “Bring in Da Noise Bring in Da Funk” stage door. Back in Argentina, they had heard all about Savion Glover’s show and how he was transforming and revolutionizing the art of tap dance. They knew that if they wanted to master the current trends in hoofing, they would have to meet the cast of “Noise/Funk” face to face.
“So we waited for them to come out,” Martin recalls. “Baakari Wilder was there and Jason Samuels too. And I said, ‘Hey, we’re dancers. We do hip-hop, but we know a little bit of tap dance.’ And I remember Baakari said, ‘Show me something, show me something.’ So I started to do all the steps I took from TV, like oh, I remember this one from Gregory Hines. And I was singing it with my mouth while at the same time doing it with my feet, in my sneakers of course. They were like, ‘Oh, wow, wow!’ And I said, ‘I want to learn more tap dance.’”
Wilder then gave the twins the insider tip they needed. He informed them about Swing 46, a jazz club in Midtown where the late Buster Brown was running one of his famous “jam sessions.” He told the twins to go on a Sunday afternoon because all the tap legends would be there. So Martin and Facundo took Wilder’s advice and made Swing 46 their new home away from home. Little did they know, these jam sessions would play an enormous role in the kind of performers and teachers they would become.
According to the twins, the jam sessions were extremely high energy and sometimes continued until late in the night. All participating dancers would form a large circle and one at a time perform about four bars of their own improvised material. Then, the next person in line would take that material and either add on to it or tweak it, often turning the session into a dance-off. Through this process, the twins were able to transition from hip-hop to tap in just a few months while also developing their own funky style. And for the twins, the best part was learning from the masters they grew up admiring on television.
Facundo gushes, “All the dancers were there at Swing 46, all the legends like Buster Brown, Jimmy Slyde and the Copasetics.
“It was very nice!” Martin continues. “I saw a lot of people dancing and I was like wow, I want to dance like that! But the thing was I didn’t know how to do it. And every time they called my name I said, ‘I don’t know tap dance, but I can show you what I do.’ So I started doing hip-hop for them.”
But after a couple jam sessions, the twins started to incorporate tap steps into their hip-hop dances, creating the unique high-energy fusion style they are known for around the world. “We didn’t want to do less than what they were doing,” Facundo reveals. “So we started to try some tap. We had tap shoes because in Argentina we made them ourselves - we put taps on our sneakers. And Buster Brown was so cool because he used to say, ‘All the way from Argentina, the twins. They’ve been dancing for 1 one month or 2 two months.’ So he helped us with that because we were terrible. But we didn’t care how good or bad we were.” He pauses and then admits with a laugh, “We were so bad, actually!”
Participating in Buster Brown’s jam sessions not only helped the twins grasp the basics of sound making, but it also gave them a better understanding of what tap dance is really about, something that sets them apart as teachers. They discovered that there is so much more to tap than steps and flawless execution; tap dance is first and foremost an art form driven entirely by self-expression, something they believe many teachers forget to emphasize in class.
“I feel there are no teachers today that teach how to express yourself,” Martin divulges. “They teach choreography, steps, and sometimes the whole story of tap dance. Or tap dance is ‘this.’ Tap dance is ‘that.’ They put up walls. But I’m more like, art was created to express ourselves, not for the art form itself. The art form is just there and it needs our emotion to stay alive.”
While Martin and Facundo certainly value and respect tradition, they believe tap needs more innovation to keep evolving, which is why they are constantly pushing the boundaries and encouraging their students to do so as well. “If you see old dancers, Bojangles, Buster Brown, Jimmy Slyde, people are doing the same things now, like combination steps,” Facundo contends. “The only way tap changed over the years was emotionally with Gregory Hines and rhythmically with Savion Glover. But I think there’s still so much more to discover about tap and we have to find it.”
Too much emphasis on technique can also be detrimental to students because it does little to foster a true sense of individuality. So when the Lombard Twins teach, they begin with a fifteen-minute warm up, followed by drills and a short piece of traditional choreography. But right after that, the class turns into an all out jam session, áa la Buster Brown, where students are encouraged to speak their minds openly and freely while exploring new rhythms with their feet and bodies.
As Martin explains, “I have them make a circle and start a jam. First, I ask them, what do you feel? How do you feel right now? What do you want to say? I don’t care how good or bad it is. I just try to teach the students how to find themselves.”
photo by Wyoming Telford
The twins always create a fun, inviting atmosphere that encourages students to express their feelings. In their classes, there is no right or wrong, there is just tap dancing. “That is how we learned,” Facundo elaborates. “For us, in the jam sessions, it was everything about the emotion. And of course it was off, and I was in and out of the music, but it didn’t matter. I was just so full of feeling that I had to move my feet.”
Improvisation, according to Martin and Facundo, is the best way to encourage self-expression and individuality through tap. At Swing 46, the twins improvised for hours to all different kinds of music including space funk, swing, jazz and Latin. And sometimes they would just dance a cappella. Through improvisation, they not only found new ways to use music, but they also discovered new ways to use their bodies, often pushing tap dance beyond its limits.
“Many tap teachers say, ‘This is tap, from the waist down’” says Facundo with a frown, expressing his disdain for this kind of thinking. “But that kills expression. Doing choreography sometimes is great, but improvisation is about moving everything in whatever way you want and finding new ways to express yourself.”
In their latest work, a documentary film dedicated to the Argentinean tango composer Ástor Piazzolla, they combine both choreography and improvisation in order to break down some of those walls surrounding the art. The film, which is presently a work in progress, merges traditional tap elements with current dance trends and contemporary music. And the result, Martin and Facundo attest, has been nothing short of fascinating so far. The twins also perform regularly as guest artists with Rasta Thomas’ new troupe, Bad Boys of Dance, and with Anti-Gravity, a New York- based company with which they performed on "Good Morning America" last year.
With all their success and recent momentum, it seems as if their lack of formal training never held them back. However, the twins do admit they have had to work twice as hard, especially in the beginning of their career. So perhaps the best way to teach tap is to give your students a combination of everything, similar to the way Savion Glover learned – a solid foundation of studio training with plenty of opportunities to improvise, jam with other tap dancers, and of course, if at all possible, work directly with the legends themselves.
But at the same time, the Lombard Twins are living proof that there is no right or wrong way to learn tap. Students just need inspiration, encouragement and positive reinforcement, and from there, the steps will fall into place with practice and perseverance. So why not take some advice from the Lombard Twins and create a Buster Brown- inspired jam session during the last fifteen minutes of class? Let your students break the rules a little; - you may be surprised how much progress they make when given the opportunity to tap on their own terms.
Every time the twins dance, whether improvising, choreographing or teaching, they break the rules with fervor and ferocity. They may have learned the fundamentals of tap from the old masters, but with their funky high-energy style, they are propelling tap into the future. Martin explains, “I cannot dance like the old guys because I’m living in 2008, in the middle of a war, in the middle of a huge mess. I know they had problems back in the 30s, but I’m expressing what’s going on right now, today, in this society.”
He adds confidently, “So one day this, what we do, will be tradition too. In 100 years, people will talk about us, the Lombard Twins.”