Tap Dance

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The term “Tap Dance” was first coined in 1928, and serves to define the dance style where the dancer audibly creates a lively rhythmic tapping through their dancing. The shoes worn by the dancer have hard soles or soles with special steel taps over the heels. The lively, rhythmic tapping produced by these shoes makes the performer not just a dancer, but also a percussive musician. Tap can be performed with musical accompaniment or a capella-style (without music).

There exist two main types of Tap: Hoofing and Broadway. In the hoofing style, the dancers utilize their legs almost exclusively, creating louder, more grounded sounds, which is sometimes referred to as “rhythm tap”. This style began its popularity in the inner city and poor areas of the country, but spread in popularity by such notable dancers as Sammy Davis Jr., Savion Glover, and Gregory Hines. In Broadway style, the dancer combines elements of ballroom dancing and ballet into the Tap dance, and is very popular in mainstream American culture. The Broadway style first gained extensive popularity due to dancers such as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly performing this style in numerous movies and Broadway shows.

There are numerous common elements to the tap dance, including the shuffle, shuffle ball change, flap, flap heel, cramp roll, buffalo, pullbacks, wings, shim sham, paddle roll, chugs, and scuffs. In more advanced dancing, the basics steps are combined into more dramatic and quicker routines, while some toe work is added to the performance.

The origins of Tap Dance date back to the days of African-American slavery, when the plantation owners outlawed the percussion drums used by the slaves in their evening festivities. The slave owners though the slaves might be using the drums to communicate over longs distances, and thereby cause a revolt. Due to the loss of drums, the slaves held onto their traditional rhythm ceremonies by transferring the sound making to their shoes, and the beginnings of Tap were formed. By the mid-nineteenth century, the combining of the African-American style with Irish clogging created the “buck and wing” style, which evolved into modern Tap Dance.

Tap was traditionally danced to Jazz music, but can be performed to any musical genre with a good solid beat. As Jazz fell out of favor in the 1950s to rock and roll, many began to move their performances to that genre. In fact, the band “Tilly and the Wall”, which formed in 2001, has a tap dancer perform in the band as the percussionist instead of having a drummer.

The popularity of the Tap Dancing has grown so widespread over the years, that on November 7, 1989, President George Bush signed into law May 25th as National Tap Dance Day. Tap has even moved into children’s movies, where a tap dancing penguin starred in the 2006 animated film “Happy Feet”.

Also known as
Step Dance, Welly Boot Dance, Clogging

Originator:
African-American Slaves

Region of origin:
United States 

Popularized by:
Sammy Davis Jr., Savion Glover, Gregory Hines, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly