History of Tap Dancing

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. 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 clip series our expert, Sue Fletcher, walks you through the ten basic steps of beginner tap dancing. Each step is explained from beginning to end in detail so you'll never feel lost or left behind. You'll learn moves like the brush step, the ball change and the flap, all of which are great for any level of expertise. She even cheats a bit and goes so far as to show how a paradittle is done. It's a bit more of an advanced move but for you guys we'll let it slide. So check out this series and get out there on the dance floor!

Video Transcript

"My name is Sue Fletcher I'm going to be showing you some basics of tap dancing beginning level tap dancing I'm going to show you things from how to how and where to buy shoes to some basic steps. I've been tap dancing for over 2 decades and I've been teaching for about 16 years I'm originally from Seattle which is from where I learn to tap dance. And I taught at the University of Washington I taught 2 different private dance schools as well it's something I really really enjoy. I hope you do to tap dancing is a really incredible form of dance it's kind of rare to find now a days what with you know like hip hop and other types of dance kind of taking over. But tap is really kind of fun and interesting and exciting and it's also one of the oldest forms of a dance that originated in America. It's been around for 130 years and it started off in the late 1800's mostly on the East coast of the United States basically, what kinds would do is chew up pieces of gum and stick them to the bottle caps and stick the bottle caps to the bottom of there shoes to make sounds. And it just kind of evolved from there they started making actually taps for tap shoes out of nickel and they still do that and it's just become quit of interesting and fascinating form of dance and became very very popular in the 1930's during the whole vauldville thing. I don't think it's a dying art I love tap I want to do it for the rest of my life I hope you enjoy it."