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---Tap
dancing started with the Negro slaves who would beat out rhythms
and dance on river boats. Plantation owners called these dancers
Levee Dancers thru
out the south, these levee dancers would wear shoes as well as
not. Levee dancers would find fame with the minstrel shows around
1830 and would hire them to perform to the Negro ditties, however,
most of these Negro performers were actually white men who would
wear face paint, (known as "Blackface ")
and perform these dances. The Black
Bottom has been credited to contributing to the "Modern
Tap Dance Musical Phrasing," with it's "Off Beat"
rhythms.
---
Tap dance and Clog
are very similar, mainly because Tap has deep roots into Clog
dance. The most difficult of the Irish clogs are the Irish
Jigs , Hornpipes and reels. In some of these the feet
can tap the floor more than seventy times in fifteen seconds.
In Clog dancing, no thought is given to facial, line expressions
and the arms are kept motionless. The Clog dance almost came to
oblivion because of the mixing of the Clog and Shuffle
dances of the African-Americans
today known as Tap by the end of the 19th century. 1900 to 1920
were the years modern tap had evolved.
--In
1866 the Black Crook,
considered to be the first musical, which featured, Burlesque,
Minstrel and Clog
dancers who danced very stiffly and gave rise to the term Pedestal
dancer. In 1902, Ned
Wayburn who created a theater play called "Minstrel
Misses " coined the term "Tap and Step
dance" in this musical play. This was the first time these
names had been used professionally. The misses used light clogs
with split wooden soles because aluminum heel and toes taps did
not appear till a decade later.
--The
Pedestal dancer
would climb upon a marbled or gilded pedestal (24 inch base)
and basically clog or tap out a routine while posing as motionless
as a statue. Henry
E. Dixey who used to whitewash himself, was one such
dancer that was known as a pedestal dancer, he would be presented
to the stage as a statue on a pedestal in the likes of Apollo
or Discobulos and
when the curtains parted he would start dancing on the pedestal
in a statue like motion.
---The Lancashire Clog,
which is a more complicated dance than that of the levee dancers,
made some contributions to Tap as well. Especially when George
H. Primrose (Cotton Coons Minstrel Company)
danced the clog without the wooden soles and invented the Soft-Shoe
routine. Barney Williams
was the first professional clog dancer to come to the U.S. in
1840. The first professional dancers (troupe) in the U.S.
were the Irish Clog dancers (traced to pre-Christian
Ireland.) These dancers that followed were called "Song
and Dance Men" in the Minstrel-Vaudeville shows. Clog contests
in the 19th century would have the judges sit behind a screen
or under the dance floor, judging the sounds rather than the body
movements of the dancers. This dance also is performed in wooden
soled shoes. For several decades Tap and Clog would flourish successfully.
---The
Soft Shoe is a form
of tap only done with soft soled shoes without metal taps attached,
first introduced by George Primrose
on the Minstrel stage in the early 1910s. Performers originally
wore all kinds of shoes to perform the Soft Shoe and as time went
on the term soft shoe was applied to many eccentric styles of
tap. The characteristics of the soft shoe however was the humor,
wit, and delicate nature of the tapping performed with a very
smooth and leisurely cadence. Occasionally this is referred to
as the Sand Dance.
---The Buck
and Wing was adapted to the Minstrel stage from the
recreational clogs and shuffles of the African-American. The Buck
and Wing is said to be a bastard dance, made up of Clogs ,
Jigs ,
Sand dance etc. The Hornpipe
of England was a elaborate Pantomime
of English sailors, mimicking their duties while patting the feet
to a tune.
Flash
Steps consist of acrobatic combinations with expanded lea and
body movements, while tapping not being essential became very
popular during the teens and twenties. These Flash steps were
more a visually stunning form of tap dance and the two main steps
called "over the top" and "through the trenches"
are credited to Toots Davis in 1913's Darktown Follies. Flash
steps were usually done at the end of the routines as they could
wear you out.
For
the Shim Sham or
Shim-Sham Shimmy (See Shim-Sham ).
The
Shout (or Ring-Shout)
was a union of dance and song. This gave birth to what was called
"Darkie dialect and rhythms" from "de camp meetin'
hymns" and "work hollers" of the old south.
The
fastStep dance ,
once popular and is the forerunner to the slower Soft Shoe style
of Tap dancing done in 3/4 time. Originally came from Ireland
around 400 A.D. and is often times called the great Grandaddy
of Tap dancing. The early Irish dancers wore hard shoes designed
to protect the feet for the weather in the British Isle. It was
here these dancers created the Jig's they used in step dancing.
These dancers would keep their arms perfectly still and at their
sides, ignoring the more flashier arms movements of other dances.
This dance would later become popular in England.
Tcolor=heTime Step derived from the
older Buck and Wing Style of dance and would prove to become one
of the basic steps to tap dancing as well as Falling off a log
and shuffling off to buffalo and Wings.
Wings:
The
more modernWings
started to become a basic stable to tap dancing around 1900. "Wings"
are basically derived from the much older minstrel variations
of the Pigeon Wing but no real air
step. Eventually becoming "air steps" that have the
dancer springing up from one leg off the floor, and using the
correct timing to do a certain amount of taps with the same foot
before landing back down while the other "winging leg"
usually remins motionless. There are variations such as the pump
(winging leg goes up and down), double back, pendulum,
Three-tap wing (one tap on the way up and two on the way down),
Five-tap wings, etc.
Guinness World Book Records:
Roy Castle - January 14, 1973 -- 1,440 Taps Per Minute (24 per
second).
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