What was tap dancing originally used for

This evolved to a form of stage performance where black performers would imitate the Irish imitation of slave dancing got that? In , Thomas Rice added metallic soles to his shoes to add noise to his rhythmic movements, and other minstrel and vaudeville actors immediately followed suit. Tap dancing spread wildly, and soon became a popular form of comedy. Jim Crow laws forbade him to be on stage with white performers—with the exception of children, so long as his role was that of a servant.

Thus, his most popular gig on the silver screen was of a household servant with child actor Shirley Temple. As jazz music spread in the s, so did a slight division in styles of tap dancing. Prohibition laws created underground speakeasy clubs, where black dancers could find work performing for white audiences; the most popular was The Cotton Club in Harlem.

As tap-dancing grew in popularity, competition between speakeasies meant the entertainment bill promised more exciting performances. Thus, tap became more acrobatic and athletic.

Tap, like jazz, is a uniquely American contribution to the performing arts. Its roots are buried in the antiquity of tropical and temperate tribal lands. However, its staccato and style are homegrown. From the West of Ireland to the West Indies to the dance halls of old New York, the drumming of rhythmic feet tapped out an American story that is still unfolding.

The faint percussion of European and African feet echoes through the often brutal colonization of the Americas, across the wars that founded and nearly destroyed a nation, over dirt country roads and the scarred boards of stages, in the fading images of old celluloid, and under the pounding rhythm of a modern flashmob, hammering out a crowd-pleasing, syncopated beat. Tap is a relatively new dance form with an ancient provenance. It is an artifact of history with its own history of fusion and famous tappers.

In the s, indentured Irish servants were imported to the colonies to serve British families, and Africans were enslaved to work the Caribbean and mainland plantations. Their lives were often unspeakable, but their spirits were irrepressible, and dance -- a tapping, stomping, stylized dance -- was a gift of their heritage that survived.

The choreography of these poor people's dances didn't require music; they seldom had instruments, anyway. The dance was the music, its sound as important as movement in expressing the emotion and telling the story.

Over time, the two rhythmic dance styles borrowed from each other. By the mids, the fusion moves turned up in dance halls. Seibert also brings in the matter of personality—charisma and charm, which are crucial matters in tap—and he has some fun with people who were short on it.

In some close-ups, she looks ready to eat the camera. Baby Laurence , whom the old tappers viewed as a master, was not recorded on film during his superb middle years, because his heroin addiction was such that he could never get it together to be in a show.

Seibert does not disrespect Baby Laurence for this. Indeed, he sees something good in just about every dancer he writes about. I am talking here not about charity, merely judiciousness. He has a few adjustments to make to great reputations, for example, that of Fred Astaire, who is so often described as perfect. Many male tappers, black and white, have taken female tappers less than seriously. One job Seibert gave himself was to trace a clear historical arc, and he does that.

Through the meeting of Irish and West African people trying to enjoy themselves on a Saturday night—often together, in the same dance halls—the thing we call tap dance emerged, with its special technique and, as it grew alongside jazz, its special rhythmic qualities. At its high tide, the nineteen-twenties through the fifties, tap was everywhere: in movies, in musicals, in vaudeville, and above all in clubs.

Then something happened. People in the field speak of an actual moment when the change occurred: the death of Bill Robinson. Three thousand people crowded into the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and thousands more stood outside.

No more jobs. Of course, the economic drain was not because of Robinson. He was seventy-two; he had a right to die. But many factors converged. Popular music changed, too, from tap-friendly jazz to rock and roll. Atkins took a job choreographing routines for Motown groups. He taught the Supremes, and Martha and the Vandellas, how to move. Other men got work as janitors or hotel clerks, or they drank. Then, in the seventies, a number of white female tappers—the most important were Brenda Bufalino and Jane Goldberg—decided that tap had to be saved.

They pulled these discouraged men out of their living rooms and organized festivals where tap could once again be performed and taught. Seibert can be very funny about how the women ran around getting the old tappers their meds and drove them to their appointments, and how, at the teaching sessions, the woman often got the job of explaining how a step should be done, at which point the great man, from his chair, might correct her, in front of the class.

Those women should be honored, but what tap needed, in addition to classes and festivals, was a big star. Soon he came: Gregory Hines , the son of a jazz drummer and, with his brother Maurice, part of a child tap act. For a time, Hines wanted to be a rock guitarist, and a hippie, but finally he was willing to be a tap dancer, and, with his affability and his virility and his tank tops, everyone fell in love with him. Glover, now forty-one, is certainly the most accomplished tap technician living—probably the most accomplished who ever lived.

Seibert credits him for that, but then wonders whether such extreme concentration on technique is good for the field, or even for the art. Glover has drilled deeper and deeper into sound, but tap is other things besides sound.