Military Cramp Rolls in Tap Dancing

Series Summary

The rhythmic foot stomping we call tap dancing emerged in the 1830s from a blend of cultures in Manhattan’s original melting pot, the Five Points neighborhood (recently depicted in Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York.) Essentially a blend of African shuffle and Irish jig, tap dance became extremely popular in the first half of the 20th century. The metal plates attached to the bottom of the dancer’s shoes create a percussive rhythm which could either accompany music, or be used as an instrument itself. This popular form of entertainment soon found its way from amateur street performances to vaudeville, Broadway, and eventually film and television, where millions were inspired by the moves of Sammy Davis, Jr., Gregory Hines, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I am Emily Larew, and we are going to learn the military cramproll. Here we go. So we're going to add, on this whole level, add to our beginning basics with faster movements, a little bit more steps involved as well. Okay. So here we go. Our cramproll, we've already learned, was a four sound step, step, heel, heel. We're doing it on the right. So we have cramproll. Yes, four sounds. Make sure when you're really trying to get that cramproll, and even as you're trying to do the military cramproll, that you're really pressing into the balls of your feet so you can drop your heels and get those four sounds. Otherwise you're just going to hear, you know what I mean, instead of having four sounds. All right. So we're going to do a military cramproll is, you have cramproll, cramproll, cramproll, we're going to do a heel, heel, right, left. As you can see, it's very military sounding, right? So here we go. Do it one more time on the right with me and we'll switch it over to the left. Five, six, seven, eight, and a one. Again. Let's try left. Left, right, okay? So make sure you drop those heels left, right this time. Good job, that was your military cramprolls with three cramprolls and two heels. "