For those of you who aren’t already aware the Grobety Sisters - Olivia and Rebecca - will be teaching at Simply Theatre from September. If you haven’t heard of them before, they happen to be the current Swiss tap dance champions and are also World champions in the elite duo category. Olivia and Rebecca managed to find time in their busy dancing and teaching schedule to answer a few questions about themselves:
Hi Olivia and Rebecca, we're really excited that you're coming to teach at Simply Theatre from September. When did you start dancing and what styles have you studied?
We started with tap dancing when we were 5 and 6 years old. Tap is still by far our favourite style, but we've also done quite a lot of ballet, contemporary, modern and musical theatre. We've also studied a bit of hip hop, lindy hop, and various styles of ballroom dancing.
You've done quite a bit of competing haven't you - when did you start competing?
Yes we have! We're currently Swiss tap dance champions and also World champions in the elite duo category. Our first competition was the Swiss tap championships in 2001 when we were 8 and 9 years old. Since then, we've participated in the Swiss and World tap dance championships every year.
What is it about dance that you love?
It allows you to express yourself and show your personality. What we especially love about tap dance is the fact that you're not only dancing, but you're actually making up your own rhythm too, it's like a perfect match between dance and percussion!
What's been the greatest moment of your dance careers so far?
Our greatest moment so far has to be when we won our elite duo title this December at the tap dance World Championships in Germany. We'd been working so hard for so many years to win that title, and it's an accomplishment we're both extremely proud of, especially as the duo category is mixed and that we won with a girl-girl duet.
What aspirations do you have for your dance careers in the future?
We've decided to do less competing ourselves from now on to allow us to focus more on performing rather than competing. We'd love to set up our own tap dance company and perform in various shows. For example, we'd really like to experiment mixing tap with other dance styles such as contemporary.
Watch out for Part 2 of our interview in the next few days...
