The Soft Shoe

    The Soft Shoe is traced back to the Old Virginia Essence dance and the minstrels who perfected it. The Essence was a very smooth and graceful dance that all professional minstrel song and dance men would do. Its graceful motions and elegance would evolve into the beginnings of the Soft Shoe which is a form of Tap Dance.

     Although it was done earlier, George Primrose is considered the man who developed the soft shoe and influenced both Black and White minstrel dancers alike. Charles Johnson, Greenlee and Drayton, Jack Wiggins, Willie Covan and Eddie Rector were pioneers and masters at the Soft Shoe.

     Willie Covan and his first partner Leonard Ruffin (Ruffin was better than Covan in the Soft Shoe) helped define the Class Act team using the Soft-Shoe as their base, they were so good in fact they got fired from the Palace Theatre in New York. The Palace was the place to be if you were good and Covan and Ruffin were good. After they would perform at the Palace, nobody could go on after them as the audience booed every act after them, after shifting them around in different spots with the same results, they had to fire them. Same thing happened to them at the Hippodrome Theatre.

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