History of Tap
THE ROOTS OF A TAP BEAT Tap dance is not a form that originates from one specific place, region, or culture. But, main elements of tap dance, such as improvisation and rhythm, have their origin in Africa. ... Later, in accordance with tap, this stopping would be on proper wooden ground. EVOLUTION OF A TAP DANCE Surely enough, with the white Europeans and Africans now in proximity of each other due to slavery, cultures were going to be exposed and eventually intermingled and evolving with time. ... Lanes movements were one of the first to closely resemble the movements and element This early form of tap dance created in colonial America is very different from tap as we know it today. In the early 1900s, a cellar like place called "The Hoofers Club" was known as the headquarters for tap dance. ... During the peak of tap dance popularity many famous Tap dancers worked their way up through the Hoofers Club, by displaying and improving their tap talents. This was the breading exchange place of many diverse tap styles who have inspired the inevitable evolvement of tap dance. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson is perhaps the most famous of the early tap dancers who helped to refine the dance. Robinson created a more specific technique based on articulation and clarity of sound and being the first to bring tap dance up onto the toes. The next influential tap dancer to come along was John W. ... He is known as "the father of rhythm tap". Bubbles is responsible for the modern jazz-tap percussion. He incorporated many jazz music ideas into his tap dancing such as syncopation. ... There is no doubt how the talent of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly helped bring tap to the mainstream arena. Astaire was the first to bring elements of ballet through his training to tap. Gene Kelly expanded the boundaries of tap by experimenting with purely cinematic tap dance, extending tap in new artistic directions, both featured in motion picture Hollywood musicals, which are now classics. Other successful performers such as the Nicholas Brothers, Leonard Reed, Willie Bryant, and Eddie Brown were also big influences on the dance we call tap today. MUSICAL INFLUENCES OF TAP-JAZZ DANCE At the end of a minstrel era, classier forums, where tap dance would be performed, evolved as well.