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Demo of 
Tap Dancing Hands Down®

There is a man in a wheelchair. He is wearing black gloves with taps sewn to them. He has his hands up with palms facing the camera so you can see the taps.

Avni Jahjaga wearing his
Tap Dancing Hands Down® gloves

Tap Dancing Hands Down® is an innovative system of tap dancing with hands instead of feet. Taps are sewn to gloves, and dancers tap with their hands on wooden boards in their laps. This novel technique allows people of all types of mobility to be able to tap dance.​

Creation of Tap Dancing Hands Down®

Mary Six Rupert originally created Tap Dancing Hands Down® in 2010 for her mother, who, after many years of teaching dance, had a stroke and became a wheelchair user. Mary Six wanted to find a way for her mother to be able to use her knowledge of tap, so Tap Dancing Hands Down® was born. The two were able to tap together with their hands until Mary Six’s mother passed away a few years later.

 

Even after the loss of her mother, Mary Six retained the passion for making tap dance more accessible and bringing it to people who thought they would never be able to tap. She continued perfecting the technique, and, starting in 2016, went on to teach Tap Dancing Hands Down® at multiple senior centers, as well as at Wagner College. Mary Six also taught her system at Mount Sinai Hospital as part of their recreational therapy program; she was there for four summers. All of her students in the program were living with brain and/or spinal cord injuries. 

Mary Six teaching a Tap Dancing Hands Down® class at Mount Sinai Hospital. Mary Six, an older woman with blond hair, is standing at the end of a long table. Multiple people are sitting around the table, some of them in wheelchairs. Everyone has a wooden board on the table in front of them. Everyone is wearing black gloves with taps sewn to them.

Tap Dancing Hands Down® Classes and Certification

Mary Six teaches Tap Dancing Hands Down® classes at Tap Dance Central in NYC and privately over Zoom. She also has a Teaching Certification Program if people are interested in teaching the system themselves. 

Tap Dancing Hands Down(R)

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