'Happy Feet' or 'Broadway,' heel and toe sounding off

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Northwest resident Cathy Newman was standing in line one day waiting to buy coffee at the office cafeteria when a woman behind her wondered aloud: "What's that sound?"

Ms. Newman was practicing her tap-dancing skills out of habit and the clickety-clack of her shoes gave her away.

"It's an infectious thing, a happy thing," Ms. Newman says.

Tap dancing isn't just for modern masters like Savion Glover of "Bring In 'Da Noise, Bring In 'Da Funk" fame. Plenty of District dwellers are taking tap classes to step a little livelier.

Budding tappers can find classes at the D.C. Dance Collective, Joy of Motion, the Dance Place and the Knock On Wood Tap Studio in Silver Spring.

Ms. Newman, 56, says she took ballet and tap lessons as a child but "didn't go near a pair of tap shoes for 40 years or so."

She took a 12-week beginner class "as a lark" and found she was one of the older students in the session.

"I didn't care," she says, describing the lessons as "liberating."

"I didn't have any illusions of being Gregory Hines," she says of the late tap dancing great.

Heidi Schultz, a tap instructor with the District's Joy of Motion dance studio, says tap breaks down into two camps: rhythm tap, and Broadway or show tap.