Tap Dancing History

Much of the early history of tap is dependent on oral history and contextual awareness. In the 1600s English sugar plantations in the Caribbean were worked by indentured Irish servants and enslaved West Africans. This forced fusion of two cultures resulted in a blend of music, dance and

Cole used many ethnic and folk styles of dance (like East Indian, flamenco, and the lindy) as a source for movements. His style was derived from dance movements performed for centuries by common people, but theatricalised for use on the stage. This is why, when pressed for a definition of his movement, Cole termed it "urban folk dance."

The author uses personal stories from the children including how they feel about tap dancing and the backgrounds in which the children were brought up. Miss Preston age 14 also known as “Sweet Pea” is one of the young tap dancers being interviewed for this story. Sweet Pea comes from a family with a Mother, three brothers, and two sisters. She had been tap dancing in the French Quarter since she was five years old. Since Sweet Pea’s mother is not employed and her father is deceased, she feels like it is her duty to bring in money for her family. Sweet Pea wants her family to have better things in life, including a new place to stay and food to put on the table. Bragg stated in this story “Like a lot of children here, she gives the money to her family. And like a lot of them, it is the only income they have outside of the government checks.” (Bragg, Somebody Told Me, 63). Tap dancing is harmless and is the only way that the children could at least lend a helping hand in the household to keep their families from living on the streets. Reading throughout the story you can tell that Sweet Pea loves to tap, but she also knows that if she did not go out and tap for money that her family would have

The Sioux Grass Dance is considered to be the most popular style of Native American Music. As one dances to this music, they follow a pattern known as “toe-heel.” This consists of the individual placing the left foot in front of the right and repeating with the other foot. Each male dancer makes many

Both tap and ballet are equally important. If you look at ballet, it’s the foundation of all types of dance. From hip hop to tap and all around. Ballet helps you with your posture and strength. Not just abdominal strength, but a whole variety of stronger bodily parts. You work on arm and leg strength with your combinations and positions. From your developes to your high first. Every part of your body is working and getting stronger. The same goes for tap. It strengthens your ankles and works with your musicality. The accents and speeds are varied so you stay attentive. In today’s modern world, we tend to fly through things and go fast. Which is why ballet it so important. If we go too fast our bodies could get seriously injured. Ballet teaches

Gregory hines is known for being a famous tap dancer. Hines was born on february

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who claimed he could run backward faster than most men could go forward, was the most famous of all African American tap dancers in the twentieth century. Dancing upright and swinging, his light and exacting footwork brought tap "up on its toes" from an earlier flat-footed shuffling style, and developed the art of tap dancing to a delicate perfection.

One of the primary ways in which Tap, swing and jazz dance deviate completely from ballet are how the styles organically developed into social dances. Ballet started as a social court dance however at it’s inception was segregated from it’s roots as something purely performative. Jazz dance forms on the other hand such as tap dance kept many of the swing vernaculars which created them in their performance. That is to say that when watching a tap dancer perform on stage (with a traditional deportment) and then watching a swing dancer in a dance hall, one can see the similarities in movement qualities and even certain steps (such as the “shim sham” or “Attack Annies”). From this it can be argued that Tap dancers (as well as all vernacular jazz dancers of the day) question what dance is by keeping its social roots alive even after it had transitioned onto the stage. The fact that tap dance was a part of the vernacular dance of the day (and still had a casual culture about it) allowed that the Nicholas Brothers to learn to dance without ever taking a class (Frank 67). Where as a ballet dancer may spend long hours training at the bar and in class Fayard Nicholas learned to tap dance purely through watching

Back in the ninteenhundreds this was the time period where different styles and techniques of dance were created among people with different backgrounds and experiences. During this time period dance styles like tap and Jazz were created and had many people to influence this kind of dance in order for this style of dance to become as popular as it did. However, people have a controversy whether if jazz or tap dance is considered an art or an entertainment. In society, people viewed Jazz either as art or entertainment because where and when people performed there and how their personality is shown in the dance and what interpretation people get out of the performance. Tap on the other hand people had the same views as they did for jazz and most people say tap and jazz relate to each other because many of the techniques are very similar and they are all American dances that eventually evolved into different styles and how it's portrayed on the dance floor. Therefore even though these both dances have different significance in style, they both have the same journey of beginning as a form of entertainment to an art, but still having that aspect of entertainment in mind.

Who is dancing and why is he tapping those toes, is it Grant Gustin, a national tap champion with those tippity tapping toes. He can travel back in time when he hits that beat hard. he is tippity tapping along the floor and fighting crime as tap man. By day he is mild mannered pharmaceutical sales man grant and by night he is tapman, First he distracts them with his tap skills and then throws sand right in their eyes. His main villain is break dance man because he keeps converting people to break dancing on the streets instead of tapping in the studio, but they will eventually have to come together to form the snazzercide squad to stop ballet girl and irish stepdance woman because no one likes ballet or step dance. Then in a flurry of dance

Cole carved a clear space for jazz dance in theater and film. Others soon followed in his wake, famously Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Michael Kidd, Alvin Ailey, Gower Champion, Peter Gennaro, and Michael Bennett. Cole dancers more than two, but not a lot of became experts at creating dance patterns included Rod Alexander, Anna Austin, Nita Bieber, Ron Field, Malcolm Goddard, Carol Haney, Bob Hamilton, etc. But his followers could not copy his energy for movement invention, a fine eye for sculpting space, or ability to hold or do something for enriching dancing with production design. Beyond the dance world, Cole was a person that comes up with cool new ideas and fashions with a lasting effect on American culture. In his set and costume designs, he first discovered the use of bold first or most important

Concurrent with his singing career, Michael also trademarked some his unique dance moves accompanied by some of his songs like “Billie Jeans” and “Ghosts”. Though I am not a dancer, I am absolutely awed by his dance moves such as the moonwalk, circle slide, the pelvic thrust and the spin, all of which serves as a trademark icon to him. No doubt, many dancers all over the world had been greatly inspired by Michael as with the many singers and musicians.

Also, by including African-American “theatrical and vernacular dancing” into his performances, it allowed people to experience new kinds of dance that were unheard of for the people at this time period (Escoffier 35). This explains that most of George Balanchine’s amazing performances were able to be successful thanks to his interest in African-American dance culture, which enabled it to spread among the ballet world. Furthermore, he included tap dancing in his ballet performances with the help of Herbie Harper, an African-American tap dancer, which allowed him to further expand movements in his ballet. In addition, with the use of tap dancing, Balanchine was able to “incorporate traditional ballet movements within a jazz-dance framework”, which allowed him to change the “turned out posture of ballet to parallel leg positions” to allow the dancers to perform movements similar

Although popping was created in the 1970s it is still used today. As mentioned, it was initially influenced by locking. However, through the years many techniques and styles were combined with popping to enable the performer to give a more varied show. Some of these techniques and styles include boogaloo/electric boogaloo (a fluid leg-orientated style including rolls of the hips, knees and head), slow motion (moving very slowly as if the dancer is being viewed in slow motion), puppeting (a style where the dancer imitates a puppet tied to strings), robot/botting (a style that imitates a robot that’s dancing) and waving (a series of fluid movements that appears as if waves are travelling through the dancer’s body).

A trait that all the famous tappers that we have learned about over the semester, have in common is their creative and original style. Which is something I find amazing and interesting. I like the approach that Savion Glover has towards tap, his delivery is so free but at the same time structured and also rhythmic. My favorite part about tap dance and the arts in general, is that you have the opportunity to express yourself and let creativity flow through your work.