The History of Tap Dance

Series Summary

The rhythmic foot stomping we call tap dancing emerged in the 1830’s 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.

A recent resurgence of tap enthusiasm came in the 90’s with the infusion of new dancers, such as Savion Glover, who began to incorporate a more personal style into their performances, and essentially made tap dancing “cool” again.

In this free video dance class, learn how to tap dance as an absolute beginner. An experienced tap dancer will walk you through the most basic steps you need to know to get started. Lessons include steps like the shuffle move and the ball change, as well as basic toe techniques, tap dancing postures, and a practice routine.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sarah McLellan in New York City here at June Parody's Dance Studio. On behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to teach you today some basic and beginning tap moves. Come on in. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a history about tap dancing. Today everyone thinks of tap dancing as pretty much the style dancing that came from Broadway and the movies but it actually came from the dance styles in Northern England, kind of clunk dancing. They use to put a couple of pennies on the bottom of there shoes to make sounds. It also came from Irish jigs, and Scottish wheels and things like that. But it even has ties back to African dancing in kind of like stooping and Picasso kind of dancing. So tap dancing today was definitely develop from those things in the 19th century became popular in the Untied States but it is definitely popular in many other parts of the world. So tap dancing today is definitely came a long way from where it came from. You can see it in moves, they are even using it in animation and in moves like Happy Feet and the Polar Express. "