NORTH ANDOVER — Soon the dancers will dance.
They’re about to demonstrate pieces from tap performances that took them 4,000 miles from Studio 5 at the Nancy Chippendale Dance Studios, to the IDO World Tap Championships in Prague, Czech Republic, where they spent a formative, memorable week from Oct 23-27.
“Ready guys,” says coach Cory Lunny, counting and clapping four beats.
Four members of the children’s formation team face Lunny and a wall-length mirror and dance from “Opa!,” the routine that won their teammates and them a gold medal.
Hands on hips, Hadley and Charlotte Tedesco of Andover, Sofia Falzone of Methuen and Sami Roge of Ipswich pound out rhythms in place. Metal plates on their shoes click, clack and stomp, the beats sometimes syncopated, always in sync.
They drop a knee, swing left and clap, then reach high and call out “Opa!”
The girls and two teen boys – Ethan Novak of Boxford and James Del Turco of Wilmington – have been dancing most of their lives, since 2 and 3 years old for some of them.
Tap dancing challenges, connects and transports them week in, week out.
But their week on the world stage changed them.
Over five days in Prague the kids summoned inner strength in emotionally tense competitive moments.
Over almost a week in the Old World capital among fairy tale towers, arches and spires that date to the Middle Ages, they found friendships with fellow dancers from other countries and continents.
“The dance is a big part of it, but the relationships and the experiences are so much more valuable,” says parent Jay Del Turco, the team’s photographer and videographer.
The dancers trained for a year in this rehearsal space at the far end of the Sutton Street building.
They had to audition with the United States DanceSport & Competition Federation to qualify for Team USA and prepare for the IDO championships, known as the Olympics of tap.
Like at the Olympics, competitors must survive to advance.
The field — in categories from solo to formation groups — gets whittled to first round, semi-final and final competitions to determine the bronze, silver and gold medal winners on the podium.
But before all of that, to do the work needed to build skills and enter the competitive fray, the dancers have to be excited by tap, the art.
Why tap? What about it appeals to the tappers?
“You are able to make music with your feet and show how you can be you,” says Hadley Tedesco, 12, a dancer since she was 2 years old.
Tap dancing is an original American form, a percussive art born of Irish, English, West African and other influences.
Its steps, movements and storytelling were cultivated through minstrel and vaudeville acts and energized by ragtime and jazz music.
The form remains especially vibrant in New England, says coach Nancy Chippendale.
The Merrimack Valley is a hotbed of tap in New England.
A quarter of the 200 tap dancers who represented the United States in Prague came from the Chippendale studios’ American Tap Company, which auditions and trains dancers from within and outside this area.
Thirty of the 49 company dancers came from Massachusetts, 14 from New Hampshire and four from New York with one from Wisconsin.
A former American Dance Company member from Lawrence, Lyahnnette Morales, 15, also competed with Team USA at the IDO’s in Prague.
Lyahnnette, a company dancer at Stephanie Kemp’s New England Dance Academy in North Attleboro, was a member of the silver medal winning adult formation team.
She and her mom, Yanet, were excited to tour Prague and meet people from other countries.
Lyahnnette traded tokens and made friends with dancers from Australia, Great Britain, Croatia, Switzerland, Germany, Czechia, and Canada.
Trading pins and telling stories from their home countries and trading online connections are a part of the IDO tap experience.
Dancers from the Chippendale studios have been competing at the international events for 20 years.
The year 2024 was the first time Prague hosted the tap championships, hosting three age divisions and five categories of tap in each.
Ethan Novak, 15, of the American Dance Company will remember the friends he made in Prague and what he learned from competing and seeing other dancers perform.
“It is really cool to watch what these people have created and interpreted in their mind and brought to the stage,” he says.
Novak won a bronze medal in the junior solo category. He and James Del Turco were members of the gold medal winning junior formation team.
Sofia Falzone, 12, says it was exciting to talk to competitors from other countries and to make it to the finals and celebrate with her teammates.
Together, the American Tap Company won seven medals this year: two gold, three silver, and two bronze.
“Representing our country and wearing Team USA on our backs is an honor every year,” says Lunny. “This year was extra special because all 48 of our children and junior division dancers got to go home with gold medals.”
The two formation teams have 24 members each.
What got the tappers to that point was training, coaching, choreography and overcoming self-doubt, maybe channeling the energy to the stage.
There is a lot going on in the minds and bodies of the dancers in the moments before they climb the stairs to the performance floor.
The dancers gather and encourage each other.
“We go over the things we need to do in order to do our best,” says Sami Roge, 12, a dancer since she was 2.
This might include a focus on keeping their circle clean as the shape moves round, she says.
Lunny and Chippendale say the coaches keep things light and composed, telling the kids to breathe, relax.
“We train them to be confident,” says Chippendale. “(Tell them) they’ve done the work so now go and have fun.”
Chippendale also — through body language, tone or by flat-out saying so — urges them to seize the moment and make it their own.
These experiences and the confidence gained will help see them through situations in and out of dance in the years to come.
Two parents who work the front desk at the Chippendale studios, Michelle Hulburt and Julie DeGrandpre, have traveled to Europe for previous IDO championships.
They have seen their kids and teammates come together and form friendships off the stage.
“It truly is life-changing, the relationships with dancers from other countries,” DeGrandpre says.
Each summer, the North Andover studios host Dance United, when students from elsewhere in the country and the world come here to train in August.
Both the Hurlburt and DeGrandpre families host international students, taking them into their homes.
The friendships off stage and battles on stage are part of tap and its rhythms driving dance and relationships.