How tap dancing started
A Brief Tap Dance History – UMS – University Musical Society
By UMS
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June 21, 2019
Originally published October 5, 2016. Updated June 21, 2019.
Photo: Dorrance Dance in performance. The company returns to Ann Arbor on February 21-22, 2020. Photo by Nicholas Van Young.
Brief History
Tap dance originated in the United States in the early 19th century at the crossroads of African and Irish American dance forms. When slave owners took away traditional African percussion instruments, slaves turned to percussive dancing to express themselves and retain their cultural identities. These styles of dance connected with clog dancing from the British Isles, creating a unique form of movement and rhythm.
Early tap shoes had wooden soles, sometimes with pennies attached to the heel and toe. Tap gained popularity after the Civil War as a part of traveling minstrel shows, where white and black performers wore blackface and belittled black people by portraying them as lazy, dumb, and comical.
Evolution
20th Century Tap Tap was an important feature of popular Vaudeville variety shows of the early 20th century and a major part of the rich creative output of the Harlem Renaissance.
Tap dancers began collaborating with jazz musicians, incorporating improvisation and complex syncopated rhythms into their movement. The modern tap shoe, featuring metal plates (called “taps”) on the heel and toe, also came into widespread use at this time. Although Vaudeville and Broadway brought performance opportunities to African-American dancers, racism was still pervasive: white and black dancers typically performed separately and for segregated audiences.
Tap’s popularity declined in the second half of the century, but was reinvigorated in the 1980s through Broadway shows like 42nd Street and The Tap Dance Kid.
Tap in Hollywood
From the 1930s to the 1950s, tap dance sequences became a staple of movies and television. Tap stars included Shirley Temple, who made her film tap dance debut at age 6, and Gene Kelly, who introduced a balletic style of tap.
Fred Astaire, famous for combining tap with ballroom dance, insisted that his dance scenes be captured with a single take and wide camera angle. This style of cinematography became the norm for tap dancing in movies and television for decades.
The Greats
Master Juba (ca. 1825 – ca. 1852) was one of the only early black tap dancers to tour with a white minstrel group and one of the first to perform for white audiences. Master Juba offered a fast and technically brilliant dance style blending European and African dance forms.
Dancer Jeni LeGon with dancer (and musician) Chester Whitmore in 2009. Joe Mabel/Century Ballroom
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878—1949) began dancing in minstrel shows and was one of the first African-American dancers to perform without blackface. He adapted to the changing tastes of the era, moving on to vaudeville, Broadway, Hollywood Radio programs, and television. Robinson’s most popular routine involved dancing up and down a staircase with complex tap rhythms on each step.
Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates (1907-98) continued to dance with after losing a leg in a cotton gin accident as a child. He danced in vaudeville, on film, and was a frequent guest on the Ed Sullivan Show. Bates also frequently performed for others with physical disabilities.
Jeni Le Gon (1916-2012) was one of the first black women to become a tap soloist in the first half of the 20th century. She wore pants rather than skirts when she performed and, as a result, she developed an athletic, acrobatic style, employing mule kicks and flying splits, more in the manner of the male dancers of the time.
The Nicholas Brothers Fayard (1914-2006) and Harold (1921-2000) Nicholas had a film and television tap career spanning more than 70 years. Impressed by their choreography, George Balanchine invited them to appear in his Broadway production of Babes in Arms. Their unique style of suppleness, strength, and fearlessness led many to believe that they were trained ballet dancers.
Gregory Hines (1946-2003) introduced a higher complexity of the improvisation of steps, sounds, rhythms. Hines’s dances were rhythmically involved and often strayed from traditional rhythmic meters. Savion
Glover (b. 1973) is best known for starring in the Broadway hit The Tap Dance Kid. Glover mixes classic moves like those of his teacher Gregory Hines with his own contemporary style. He has won several Tony awards for his Broadway choreography.
The Blues Project – Dorrance Dance Company with Toshi Reagan and BIGLovely
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Tap dance is an indigenous American dance genre that evolved over a period of some three hundred years. Initially a fusion of British and West African musical and step-dance traditions in America, tap emerged in the southern United States in the 1700s. The Irish jig (a musical and dance form) and West African gioube (sacred and secular stepping dances) mutated into the American jig and juba. These in turn became juxtaposed and fused into a form of dancing called “jigging” which, in the 1800s, was taken up by white and black minstrel-show dancers who developed tap into a popular nineteenth-century stage entertainment.
Early styles of tapping utilized hard-soled shoes, clogs, or hobnailed boots. It was not until the early decades of the twentieth century that metal plates (or taps) appeared on shoes of dancers on the Broadway musical stage. It was around that time that jazz tap dance developed as a musical form parallel to jazz music, sharing rhythmic motifs, polyrhythm, multiple meters, elements of swing, and structured improvisation. In the late twentieth century, tap dance evolved into a concertized performance on the musical and concert hall stage. Its absorption of Latin American and Afro- Caribbean rhythms in the forties has furthered its rhythmic complexity. In the eighties and nineties, tap’s absorption of hip-hop rhythms has attracted a fierce and multi-ethnic new breed of male and female dancers who continue to challenge and evolve the dance form, making tap the most cutting-edge dance expression in America today.
As Africans were transplanted to America, African religious circle dance rituals, which had been of central importance to their life and culture, were adapted and transformed (Stuckey 1987).
The African American Juba, for example, derived from the African djouba or gioube, moved in a counterclockwise circle and was distinguished by the rhythmic shuffling of feet, clapping hands, and “patting” the body, as if it were a large drum. With the passage of he Slave Laws in the 1740s prohibiting the beating of drums for the fear of slave uprisings, there developed creative substitutes for drumming, such as bone- clapping, jawboning, hand-clapping, and percussive footwork. There were also retentions by the indentured Irish, as well as parallel retentions between the Irish and enslaved Africans, of certain music, dance and storytelling traditions. Both peoples took pride in skills like dancing while balancing a glass of beer or water on their heads, and stepping to intricate rhythmic patterns while singing or lilting these same rhythms. Some contend that the cakewalk, a strutting and prancing dance originated by plantation slaves to imitate and satirize the manners of their white masters, borrows from the Irish tradition of dancing competitively for a cake.
And that Africans may have transformed the Irish custom of jumping the broomstick into their own unofficial wedding ceremony at a time when slaves were denied Christian rites.
The conceptualization of tap dance as an Afro-Irish fusion, fueled by the competitive interplay of the challenge in a battle for virtuosity and authority, puts into focus issues of race and ethnicity; and inevitably takes on the painful history of race, racism, and race relations in America. In addition, there are issues of class, in which tap was considered a popular entertainment and placed in the category of “low-art,” and therefore not worthy of being presented on the concert stage. Moreover, the strange absence of women in early accounts of jigging competitions forces a consideration of gender in the evolution of tap dance which, for most of the twentieth century, was considered “a man’s game.
” That has become a kind of mythologized truth, given the plethora of tap histories that have blindsided women. By inference or direct statement, women were told they were “weak”; they lacked the physical strength needed to perform the rhythm-driven piston steps, multiple-wing steps, and flash and acrobatic steps that symbolized the (male) tap virtuoso’s finish to a routine. Women were “nurturers,” not competitors,” and therefore did not engage in the tap challenge. A woman’s role was not as a soloist but as a member of the chorus line.
Lotta (Mignon) Crabtree
Lotta (Mignon) Crabtree was born on Nassau Street in New York City in 1847, and raised in California during the Gold Rush, where she learned ballet, fandangos, and the Highland fling.
Since in the 1850s half of California’s population was Irish, her teachers made sure she excelled at the jig. As a dancer touring mining camps, she was introduced to an African-American dancer who taught her breakdowns, soft-shoes, and buck- and-wing dances. Crabtree’s fame spread throughout the country, as she was as a performer of jigs and reels, with acrobatic flourishes. Her only competitors were the three Worrell sisters, Irene, Sophie, and Jennie, who performed in clog-dancing shoes. When it was later discovered that Jennie Worrell’s clogs had trick heels (heels that were hollowed out with tin-lined boxes placed inside and holding two bullets), that made it sound like she was dancing faster than she really was, Crabtree had no peers when it came to jig and clog. “She can dance a regular breakdown in true burnt cork style and gives an Irish Jig as well as we have ever seen it done,” wrote the New York Clipper in 1864 (Rourke 1928). In her later years she became a popular actress and the toast of Broadway.
While she retired from the stage in 1891 at the age of forty-four, her renown as a female jig and breakdown dancer lasted into the early decades of the twentieth century.
Ada Overton Walker
Ada Overton Walker was born on Valentines Day in 1880 in New York’s Greenwich Village. As a child she received dance instruction from a Mrs. Thorp in midtown Manhattan. Around 1897, after graduating from Thorp’s dance school, she toured briefly with Black Patti’s Troubadours. A girlfriend invited her to model for an advertisement with Bert Williams and George Walker, who had just scored a hit in their vaudeville debut at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall. She agreed to model for the ad and subsequently joined the men to dance in the cakewalk finale. After joining John W. Isham’s Octoroon, a critic for the Indianapolis Freeman declared, “I had just observed the greatest girl dancer.” With Grace Halliday she formed the sister dance act of Overton and Halliday. They performed as the pair of Honolulu Belles in the Williams and Walkers’ The Policy Players (1899), and from there, Overton began to develop as a soloist with more substantial roles.
In the musical comedy The Sons of Ham (1900) she sang and danced “Miss Hannah from Savannah” and “Leading Lady”; and in its second edition, “Society” and “Sparkling Ruby” which brought her jubilant acclaim. James Weldon Johnson wrote that she “had a low-pitched voice with a natural sob to it, which she knew how to use with telling effect in putting over a song” (Johnson 1933). Tom Fletcher remembered her as a singer who did ragtime songs and ballads equally well; and as a dancer “who could do almost anything, and no matter whether it was buck-and-wing, cakewalk, or even some form of grotesque dancing . . . she lent the performance a neat gracefulness of movement unsurpassed by anyone” (Fletcher 1954).
Text Source: Library of Congress
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Who invented tap dancing? — Discuss
Who invented tap dancing? — DiscussSe
Sergey
Who invented the tap dance? tap dancing
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Answers
FYa
Faina I
Tap dance comes from a mixture of different cultures, primarily Irish dance and African-American dance traditions. It became especially popular in the United States, where many cultural traditions fused and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries a new dance appeared. nine0003
In the 1930s and 1940s, tap music became hugely popular thanks to Hollywood musical pictures. Fred Astaire, Paul Drapre, Ray Bolger introduced elements of modern dance and movement from classical ballet into tap dance, diversifying and enriching the aesthetics of the dance.
Naturally, the fashion for jazz popularized tap dancing, giving it a new image and a more complex rhythmic and melodic basis.
In the 1970s, interest in tap dance revived, thanks to the fact that old musicals were restored in the USA, dance schools began to reopen. One of the most popular bands in the world that perform a variety of Irish step (Irish hard shoe) is the group "Riverdance". nine0003
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Nikolai Ivanovich Tomilov
This is the only dance that even a blind person can appreciate. This is embedded in its name: .In our country, it is known as step or tap dance. Tap-dance (from gypsy chyache "yes": frequent shouting during tap-dancing), also step (English step dance from step "step" + dance "dance"; in the English language itself, this term includes any dances with an emphasis on footwork , and for tap dancing, tap dance is used from tap “to knock; light knock”) - a kind of dance, a characteristic feature of which is rhythmic percussive footwork.
Tap dancing comes from a mixture of different cultures, primarily Irish dance and African American dance traditions. nine0003
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Se
Sergey
Thank you. Are you a professional dancer?
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Nikolai Ivanovich Tomilov
My bow, Regards.
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Se
Sergey
Nikolai Ivanovich, I am also grateful to you, I don’t know about you, I grieve for the departure of Chapkis, ts.e.s. nine0003
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Nikolai Ivanovich Tomilov
And bow to you.
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Elina Lazovskaya
The history of tap dancing
In another way, this dance is called American tap dance, because the US is considered the birthplace of the genre.
This direction became the main highlight of Broadway, and then Hollywood. The frequent and rhythmic tapping of shoes with metal heels captured the minds of Americans, despite the Great Depression that swept the country in the late 20s and early 30s of the 20th century. People enjoyed going to musical performances to admire the performance of their favorite dancers. nine0003
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LT
Lyudmila Taktueva
I love this dance, I admire the virtuosic footwork of professionals... I looked into history... I realized that tap or tap dance comes from a mixture of different cultures - Irish dance and African American cultures. In the USA it was very popular, especially at the turn of the 19-20 centuries - this new dance... Personally, tap dancing became close to me when I saw how the gypsies dance... And the Irish dance cool... And who specifically came up with it? I don't know.
.. People...
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Se
Sergey
Yes, the Irish can
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LT
Lyudmila Taktueva
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Olga Norbekova
In the 1930s and 1940s, tap music gained immense popularity thanks to Hollywood musical pictures. Fred Astaire, Paul Draper, Ray Bolger introduced elements of modern dance and movement from classical ballet into tap dance, diversifying and enriching the aesthetics of the dance. Naturally, the fashion for jazz popularized tap dancing, giving it a new image and a more complex rhythmic and melodic basis. nine0003
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Se
Sergey
1
Yut
Yury Temnikov
In the 1930s and 1940s, tap music gained immense popularity thanks to Hollywood musical pictures.
Fred Astaire, Paul Drapre, Ray Bolger introduced elements of modern dance and movement from classical ballet into tap dance, diversifying and enriching the aesthetics of the dance. Naturally, the fashion for jazz popularized tap dancing, giving it a new image and a more complex rhythmic and melodic basis. nine0003
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Se
Sergey
and who is the founder?
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Yut
Yury Temnikov
The main version was the story of the origin of tap dancing (tap dancing) from a mixture of Anglo-Irish and African cultures. Ships with desperate adventurers from England and Ireland, who were looking for a happy life, set sail from some shores. From others - ships with holds filled with African slaves. The path of both lay in America.
Sometimes the slaves were taken out on deck, where they, beating the rhythm with their feet and hands, sang the songs of their homeland, and in the port they already arranged "dances" with the white sailors. nine0190 This is how tap or step dance was born - a type of dance based on a rhythm beaten out by the feet. Tap-dancing can be masterfully performed even without musical accompaniment, because it is not for nothing that it is called "music of the feet". The only thing needed to perform the tap dance is special shoes lined with metal plates.
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Se
Sergey
Thank you for the information
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Yush
Yulia Shabakaeva
Tap dance comes from a mixture of different cultures, primarily Irish dance and African American dance traditions.
It became especially popular in the United States, where many cultural traditions fused, and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries a new dance appeared. In the 1930s and 1940s, tap music gained immense popularity thanks to Hollywood musical pictures.
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Se
Sergey
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Valentina Gorobets
In 1830, a famous Irish dancer, who performed under the pseudonym Papa Rice, demonstrated a new dance to the public. He combined the jig with some elements of African rhythms, in particular, he borrowed certain movements of the legs, shoulders and arms. Papa Rice was greeted with a standing ovation - this is how the tap dance appeared, which excited America. nine0003
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Se
Sergey
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Hope
The history of tap dancing in the United States is very old, its origins date back to the British Isles and Africa.
While this dance style originated in the early 1800s, it took a full 100 years before the genre became popular on a national scale. nine0190 You can read more here - https://4dancing.ru/blogs/100315/2073/
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Se
Sergey
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Hope
Thank you!
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Tatyana Moroz
Tap dance comes from a mixture of different cultures, primarily Irish dance and African American dance traditions. It became especially popular in the United States, where many cultural traditions fused, and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries a new dance appeared. nine0003
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Tatyana Moroz
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Se
Sergey
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Tatyana Moroz
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Se
Sergey
nine0051 Yes.
about Ilyich stratil grandfather
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Tatyana Moroz
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TR
Tamara Romaido
Tap dance comes from a mixture of different cultures, primarily Irish dance and African American dance traditions. It became especially popular in the United States, where many cultural traditions fused, and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries a new dance appeared. nine0003
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Se
Sergey
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Tamara Romaido
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Maria Baranova
The question is, of course, interesting, if you do not go into the history of the birth of tap dancing.
Where is our soul? If you know, then you understand that the pressure on the soul was strong and protracted, and there were people all around, there was no end to it. Here's a tap dance for you! nine0003
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Se
Sergey
Your rifles mean more than feelings, but the soul is always. was and is without that skill clean and full of joy.
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MB
Maria Baranova
Everything is very controversial and not unambiguous. At birth, the soul is pure, and then, as conscience will allow and dispose.
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Se
Sergey
Merry Christmas Maria
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EI
Yesadze Iskender
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.. as far as I remember, the gypsies invented tap dancing .... In the dance, beating the rhythm, they shouted "chache" - Yes, in gypsy .... From there it started .... Modern dances attribute tap dancing to the Irish and even to Africans ..... Why is that, I don’t presume to judge ....
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Se
Sergey
I have not seen gypsies tap dance, gypsy - yes, but the style itself is not from the brainchild of
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EI
Yesadze Iskender
.... watch the movie "The Elusive Avengers" ... Yashka the Gypsy dances ....
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nine0002 WWWictor Winogradov
You are absolutely right, only "Chachyo" means the truth, but during the dance and songs you can hear it, which means that a person does "from the heart" okay International_495 insta
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TS
Tatyana Smirnova
Foot music! Of course, people, for the most part this is a male dance, the genre has absorbed several cultures, Irish and African American .
. This genre has received great development in the USA, where this type of dance has been improved
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Se
Sergey
Avatar
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TS
Tatyana Smirnova
Donetsk..
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Se
Sergey
Yes, in the Republic like a donut hole
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TS
Tatyana Smirnova
I understand you and those who are there. May God give you patience and strength! And the protection of higher powers!
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Se
Sergey
Thank you and good health and all the best
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Cinema
The most popular version: the tap appeared in America due to a mixture of many cultures with similar dance movements (Irish and African traditions).
The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century - tap dance goes around the world ...
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Se
Sergey
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Cinema
ATP) an interesting question ..... when they talk about tap dance ... first of all, "Winter Evening in Gagra" comes to mind .... (I love this film) .... then any musical .....( only not delivered to us....
nineteen0003
Se
Sergey
I like it too
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Cinema
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Alex Wenzel
It is unlikely that anyone will answer this question for you, and if you name a specific person, this will also not be true.
.. All dances have been created for centuries by the people, and we will never know who first came up with the idea of tap dancing...
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Se
Sergey
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Alexander Yasnokiy
Sergey, to the question, who is the founder of the fable, they answer Aesop, to the question, who is the founder of the parable, Solomon answers, to the question, who is the founder of the tap dance... You are not bored with those who answer
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Se
Sergey
I don’t understand myself, but it’s a fact
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Alexander Yasnokiy
And the Moon is the heart of the Earth
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Se
Sergey
The blood circulation system is incomprehensible, after all, the body's engine.
nineteen0003
Alexander Yasnokiy
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Se
Sergey
1
GS
Gulfara Senichenko
The founders of the genre are Bill Robinson, Sammy Davis Jr., the Nicholas brothers and others. Although it comes from a mixture of different cultures, primarily Irish dance and African-American dance traditions. nine0003
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Se
Sergey
You are right in assuming the original genre of tap dance, which was inherent in your guys, but tap dance is much wider than tap dance and occurred much earlier
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GS
Gulfara Senichenko
Can you enlighten me?
nineteen0003
Se
Sergey
Tap dance is a broader concept that includes elements of step and folk dance with a 16-beat miscalculation.
It is used in Gypsy and Cossack dances.
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GS
Gulfara Senichenko
It turns out that wherever there is an inflow, we can talk about steppe?
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nine0002 TRTatyana Rossikhina
is a mixture of Irish and African American tap.... step in English means light tapping..... There is no specific name of the inventor, it is considered a folk dance. well, something like that...
Se
Sergey
1
TR
Tatyana Rossikhina
thank you.
...
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Count Pupyrkin
jig sailors English step dancers Yankees and tap dancing Jews because they are greedy they had one pot in a large family and in order to wait in line they had to beat their hooves
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Se
Sergey
1
Count Pupyrkin
OK
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Next page
Tap-dance - the dance that conquered America
Tap-dance - the dance that conquered America
"Music of the feet" - this is literally how tap dance can be described.
For this dance, it is not necessary to use musical accompaniment - the rhythm is beaten off by special shoes with metal plates on the sole. This is the main advantage of the genre: a unique dance pattern is available even for blind people. Because they hear him. Who first began to tap dance, we propose to find out from our article. nineHistory of tap dancing This direction became the main highlight of Broadway, and then Hollywood. The frequent and rhythmic tapping of shoes with metal heels captured the minds of Americans, despite the Great Depression that swept the country in the late 20s and early 30s of the 20th century. People enjoyed going to musical performances to admire the performance of their favorite dancers. Who was "to blame" for such a stir? nine0003
The origins of the tap dance can be traced in the ritual dances of the indigenous population of America - the Indians. Their movements during the ceremonies are indeed somewhat reminiscent of the tap dance rhythm.
But the true "parents" of the direction are still the cultural traditions of the Negroes and the Irish, who settled the lands of the New World back in the 18th century. The Negroes brought African rhythms to America, and the Irish brought the jig. During the impromptu matches hosted by the immigrants, racial and other stereotypes were dissolved in the struggle for the best wooden sole dance performance. Peculiar competitions remained in the shadow of the general public until 1830, which is considered the year of the birth of tap dance. nine0003
In 1830, a famous Irish dancer, who performed under the pseudonym Papa Rice, demonstrated a new dance to the public. He combined the jig with some elements of African rhythms, in particular, he borrowed certain movements of the legs, shoulders and arms. Papa Rice was greeted with a standing ovation - this is how the tap dance appeared, which excited America.
Until the 20s of the last century, the step was inextricably linked with Broadway and the artists who masterfully performed this dance.
One of the main tap dancers who shone on the stage was the African American Bill Robinson. The dancer managed to achieve something incredible at that time - to win over the white audience. After all, according to the rules of racial segregation of those times, blacks had to dance only for blacks, and whites for whites. Robinson changed these traditions. But not only this is remarkable for his figure in the development of tap dance. A kick with a toe, a glancing kick, a dance on the stairs - all this is his "hands" work, for which modern tap dance fans thank him. nine0003
With the development of the film industry, step dance acquires a different status. Now style is becoming the main focus of musical comedy directors. New tap dance idols appear. Frederick Austerlitz or Fred Astaire became the main star of Hollywood musicals, although initially they were skeptical about his candidacy: the balding actor does not really know how to play, except for dancing a little. But the young man was able to charm film producer David Selznick and show his talent to the whole world.
Aster's merit lies in the fact that he did not just perform the step. He masterfully combined it with the choreography of classical dance, creating a special aesthetic of the style. nine0003
Who holds the palm among black tap dancers in Hollywood? It was Sammy Davis Junior who started his career at the age of 3. The talented African American won the love of the public and captivated her with his incredibly masterful movements.
The post-war period is considered golden in the development of tap dance. The war is over - you can relax and enjoy the game of musical actors performing tap. The names of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Jinder Rogers do not leave the posters, and the great tap dancers do not stop beating a clear rhythm, turning dance into art. nine0003
In the early 1950s, the genre experienced a period of stagnation. The big bands, whose music accompanied most tap dances, were taxed by the government. Musicals cease to generate income - producers are looking for new ideas for scripts.
Thus, the tap dance remains on the sidelines of the film industry, to which it owes its development, giving way to ballet scenes.
At the end of the 60s, Broadway was dominated by big dance events: directors began to revive old musicals, including those with tap-dance numbers. At the same time, several programs about the step are launched on television. All this leads to a revival of the style, a new wave of its popularity. At the same time, step is no longer perceived simply as entertainment. Masterly tapping with shoes has become a subject of art - fans of the genre began to open schools for teaching step dance, festivals and competitions between tap dancers are organized across the country. nine0003
At present, interest in style has not faded. Yes, tap is gone from the big screens. Where did he "settle"? In small chamber venues, where modern dancers continue to beat out a clear rhythm in an attempt to win the status of the most talented tap dancer.
Interesting Facts
- Shoes with metal heels appeared only in the time of jazz.
Initially, the step was danced in clogs and shoes with wooden soles. nine0885 - Since 1989, every May 25, all dancers celebrate Tap Day. The date was not chosen by chance. On this day, step dance master Bill Robinson was born. In the US, the holiday has become an official status.
- In the 1935 film The Little Colonel, Bill Robinson performs his famous "step step" with movie star Shirley Temple, the youngest Oscar winner. It was the first film in which representatives of the black and white races danced hand in hand. For this reason, the film was banned from showing in the southern states. nine0885
- During World War II, Fred Astaire inspired American soldiers with impromptu tap dancing. He specially flew to London to raise the morale of his compatriots before landing in Normandy.
- At the beginning of the 19th century, step was considered a dance of the black population of the United States, since it was closely associated with the development of jazz. Jazz melodies seem to have been created for tap dancing, so the dance was called “jazz” in the 1920s and nothing else.
- In 1920, the tap dance became an entertainment for the former lovers of strong alcohol. Prohibition, adopted in the United States that year, completely banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. In order to somehow entertain the audience, the owners of drinking establishments invited black tap dancers.
- In 2000, an entry about tap dancer Jerry Adams appeared in the Guinness Book of Records. This dancer covered the distance from Washington to New York in 6 hours. What is remarkable here? What he did was tap dancing. By the way, the distance between the end points was 328 km. nine0885
- There is another entry in the Book of Records, dedicated this time to the fastest step dancer. 28 beats per minute - this is the result of Michael Ryan Flatley, an Irish-born choreographer. The record was set in 1989. Exactly 9 years later, the dancer broke his own record, setting a new bar of 35 beats. But not only Michael Flatley is famous for this. His large-scale dance shows, such as "Lord of the dance" and "Feet of Flames", won the love of tap dance fans around the world.
nine0885
- According to experts, the best and fastest tap dancer in the world is a woman. This title was awarded to Elinor Powell, whose career fell on the 30s and 40s.
- Irish step impresses with its vigor and rhythm. This is a rather difficult style to perform, since the number of kicks with one foot varies from 4 to 6. At the same time, the body remains motionless, only the legs are involved in the dance. They perform it to folklore, Celtic music. nine0885
- Russia has not bypassed tap dancing. Our version of the dance is called drobushki. Unlike foreign dancers, Russians have abandoned shoes with metal plates. Instead, double-soled shoes were used.
- The government of the Soviet Union in the post-war years was negatively disposed towards the tap dance - the development of the genre was hindered by the "Iron Curtain". Despite this, the traditions of the American tap dance were actively developed by the Gusakov brothers. nine0884 Tap-dancing scenes can be admired not only in old American musicals.
- There is a legend that Steppe was born on a ship carrying migrants from Europe. During the journey to distant shores, representatives of various countries came out on deck and beat a clear rhythm on the wooden floorboards. Sailors were not inferior to European dancers, who, for a better sound, came up with the idea of \u200b\u200bnailing small English coins to the soles - pennies. nine0885
They are also present in Soviet films. So, Lyubov Orlova demonstrated her talent in tap dance in the film "Circus".
The best melodies in tap rhythms
As we said earlier, the history of tap dance is inextricably linked with the development of jazz music. It was used in musicals. Therefore, the best melodies are presented in old Hollywood musical comedies.
" Chattanooga Choo-Chu " was featured in the movie Sun Valley Serenade. In 1941, the record with this composition became the leader of the American hit parade.
And the story of the song began on a train that raced along the Southern Railroad through the town of Chattanooga. Lyrics by Mark Gordon, music by Harry Warren. In the musical, the song is performed by the Glenn Miller Jazz Orchestra. nine0003
Chattanooga Choo Choo (listen)
" Singin' in the Rain ". The composition itself was released in 1929, and gained fame in 1952 after the release of the film comedy Singing in the Rain on television. Her popularity is directly related to Gene Kelly, who performed a tap to a simple melody. At the same time, the choreography was choreographed by the actor himself. In the early 2000s, the song took 3rd place in the list of the most popular compositions according to American film critics. nine0003
"Singin' in the Rain" (listen)
" The Continental " is the theme song of the 1934 film The Merry Divorce. The famous duet of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dances to it in the musical.
