Grace Adele was training at Ohio University’s School of Dance and auditioning to become a Rockette four years ago. Tomorrow, she will bring a different style of performance to Athens: She will be playing her energetic Americana music with Grace Adele & The Grand Band at Jackie O’s Pub and Brewery.
Though Adele left OU to return to her hometown of Columbus after a few quarters, she said she is looking forward to coming back to Athens, where she briefly attended school and from where her two sisters graduated.
“I know the town well and definitely love Athens,” she said. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful place.”
After focusing on dance for years, Adele discovered a love for performing music when she joined a band and learned how to play the guitar.
Songwriting came naturally to Adele, and as she had enjoyed singing her whole life, she said music took precedence over dance.
“Sometimes with dance there’s not a long career in it,” Adele said. “I decided I needed to make a choice between the two, and music was starting to be a bigger thing in my life, and it just ended up trumping dance.”
Adele is not ready to entirely abandon dance, as she said she has begun trying to incorporate dancing into her music. Grace Adele & The Grand Band are planning to use tap dance as a way to add percussion to songs.
“We’re recording a CD currently, and there are going to be a couple tracks on it that have some tap on them for percussion,” she said. “I think it adds a lot of fun, and it’s something a little different.”
Adele and her band perform music that combines several genres of music that have roots in America, including bluegrass and folk. This focus on Americana styles is easily paired with tap dance.
“Tap dancing is kind of a true American form of dance, so I really like that idea,” Adele said. “In roots music, it’s not that uncommon to see tap dancers, cloggers, that sort of thing in the music.”
Adele has spent her whole life performing for others in some way, whether it be dance or music, but for now she said she is looking forward to sharing her acoustic style with tomorrow night’s audience.
“I’ve just really been infatuated with acoustic music,” Adele said. “I started playing guitar and just really fell in love with the way acoustic instruments sound.”
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