Master Class with Anthony Morigerato
“All teachers have a responsibility to keep being students,” explains Anthony Morigerato, one of the most sought after tap teachers on the competition circuit today. “If you don’t keep learning, you get stale and stagnant, and you won’t be able to help your students progress.”
The dance world is always changing and evolving so quickly that many educators have difficulty keeping up with continuing their training. But not 23-year-old Morigerato, who has already decided to make it his top priority as a teacher and choreographer. “No matter how old I get,” he promises, “I will keep learning. I see 65-year-old teachers at conventions taking notes, learning new things, and that is what it takes to be a great teacher.”
Maybe that is why aspiring tap dancers from all over the country flock to New York City just to rehearse with him. Students of all ages want to work with Morigerato because he is a genuinely cool guy, but more importantly, because he is inspiring. He has a unique ability to help students get over their fears so they can really listen to their feet, something that he believes is best developed through improvisation.
“I started improvising as young as six years old,” explains Morigerato. “There’s something about starting with young kids. They’re not fearful of making mistakes. They’re more willing to listen to the music and let the music dictate some kind of feeling that is being evoked through their feet and through their body.”
Anthony Morigerato teaching class.
Morigerato, who is a member of Mike Minery’s Tapaholics, started dancing at the age of four at Eleanor’s School of Dance in Albany, where he studied with Chris Pantalone. He soaked up everything he could about dance, not only from mentors like Minery and Pantalone, but also from watching videos of the old tap masters. From the Nicholas Brothers and Gregory Hines to Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, he took away something different from everybody he observed.
Gene Kelly was particularly influential because of the way he incorporated a variety of elements into his choreography. “He integrated jazz and ballet, was a choreographer, a director, as well as a great tap dancer on top of it,” Morigerato explains. “I didn’t just tap. I did and still do everything, so he really was a big inspiration for me.”
Morigerato, founder of his own experimental company called AM Dance Project, stresses that tap dancers today should be versatile and learn other forms of dance like ballet, jazz, and musical theatere. For him, ballet was beneficial because it helped refine his movement. “I could choose if I wanted to really hit the floor and go down into the floor, but at the same time I could be upright and turn better. Ballet just developed all the areas of my technique for a more solid foundation,” he says.
Morigerato continued studying dance at Marymount Manhattan College, where his knowledge expanded even further. In addition to dance, he studied composition and music, a background that makes his teaching style so unique. For Morigerato, it’s not just about teaching steps; it’s about making sure his students understand how the steps work in relation to the music. “I try and make it so my students really understand musical dynamics, instrumentation, and what time signature the music is in,” he reveals.
The most rewarding part comes when his students finally “get it.” “When the light bulb all of a sudden goes off,” he explains, “they really light up because they’ve been practicing for weeks. A whole new group of doors open to them, and they say, ‘Wow, I can do this; I can do that - with just a shuffle!’ And to see that kind of joy in discovering,” Morigerato professes, “is the same thing I still go through when I discover something new. It’s what feeds you and keeps you hungry for more.”