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Beginning Tap Dance With HKPropel Access introduces students to tap dance techniques and cultivates an appreciation of tap dance as a performing art. Focusing on novice dancers, experienced tap dancer and dance instructor Lisa Lewis offers step-by-step instruction to help beginning tap dancers match the beat of their enthusiasm to the rhythm of their feet!
Designed for students enrolled in introductory tap dance courses, Beginning Tap Dance contains concise descriptions of exercises, steps, and techniques. Related online tools delivered via HKPropel feature more than 70 video clips of tap steps with verbal cues to help students review content from class or learn other beginning steps. It also contains learning features to support and extend students’ knowledge of tap dance, including assignments, e-journaling prompts, tests of tap dance terminology, a glossary, and links to further study.
The book introduces the dance form by detailing its physical and mental benefits. Students learn about etiquette, proper attire, class expectations, health, and injury prevention for dancers. After basic dance steps are introduced, tap steps are presented in groups with one, two, three, and four or more sounds. Chapters also introduce students to the history, major works, artists, styles, and aesthetics of tap dance as a performing art.
Beginning Tap Dance is ideal to support both academic and kinesthetic learning. Instructions, photos, and video clips of techniques help students practice outside of class. The text and online learning tools complement studio teaching by providing historical, artistic, and practical knowledge of tap dance plus activities, assessments, and support in skill acquisition. With Beginning Tap Dance, students can learn and enjoy performing tap dance as they gain an appreciation of the dance form.
Beginning Tap Dance is a part of Human Kinetics’ Interactive Dance Series. The series includes resources for ballet, modern, tap, jazz, musical theatre, and hip-hop dance that support introductory dance technique courses taught through dance, physical education, and fine arts departments. Each student-friendly text has related online learning tools including video clips of dance instruction, assignments, and activities. The Interactive Dance Series offers students a collection of guides to learning, performing, and viewing dance.
A code for accessing HKPropel is included with all new print books.
Chapter 1. Introduction to Tap Dance
Defining Tap Dance
Benefits of Studying Tap Dance
Basics of Tap Class
Expectations and Etiquette for Students
Structure of Tap Class
The Learning Process
Appreciating Tap Dance as a Performing Art
Summary
Chapter 2. Preparing for Class
Dressing for Class
Foot Care and Personal Hygiene
Carrying Dance Gear
Selecting Tap Shoes
Preparing Yourself Mentally and Physically
Summary
Chapter 3. Safety and Health
Studio Safety
Personal Safety
Basic Anatomy
Basic Kinesiology
Preventing and Treating Common Dance Injuries Maintaining Good Posture
Understanding Fitness
Getting Proper Nutrition, Hydration, and Rest
Summary
Chapter 4. Learning and Performing Tap Dance
Languages of Tap
Learning Tap Steps
Learning Tap Technique
Understanding Musicality
Understanding Artistry
Applying Aesthetic Principles to Tap Dance
Preparing for Class Performance Testing
Summary
Chapter 5. Tap Dance Steps
Understanding Movement
Foot Positions and Symbols
Locomotor Movements With Even Rhythms
Locomotor Movements With Uneven Rhythms
Basic Dance Steps
Tap Steps With One Sound
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
Tap Steps With Three Sounds
Tap Steps With Four or More Sounds
Summary
Chapter 6. Developing Tap Technique
Pre–Warm-Up
Warm-Up
At the Barre
Across the Floor
Centre Floor
Cool-Down
Summary
Chapter 7. History of Tap Dance
Irish Dance
English Step Dance
African Dance
Native American Dance
Minstrel Shows
Vaudeville
Motion Pictures
Artists in Tap Dance
Styles and Aesthetics in Tap Dance
Summary
Lisa Lewis, PhD, is an associate professor in the health and human performance department at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. Originally from North Carolina, Dr. Lewis started her professional dance training under master teachers Mallory Graham and Danny Hoctor, and later she studied in New York City under the legendary jazz teacher Frank Hatchett and tap professional Maurice Hines at Hines-Hatchett studio (currently Broadway Dance Center). Dr. Lewis developed online tap dance components for beginners while instructing tap dance at Middle Tennessee State University.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab11_Main.png
Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab2_Main.png
Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab3_Main.png
Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/68tab4_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Build tap steps with two sounds
The ball–change is one of the most used dance steps.
Tap Steps With Two Sounds
The following steps all have two sounds and build from the previous steps.
Ball-Change
The ball-change is one of the most used dance steps. With a ball-change you know that there will always be a weight transfer (change) while using the ball of the foot. To perform a ball-change you simply change feet on the balls of the feet. You can perform this step in various ways: crossed in back, crossed in front, back to front, apart, or front to back. This step is done with an uneven rhythm.
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Flap
A flap is a combination of a brush and a step. You can perform it to the front, back, or side.
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Slap
The slap is like the flap, but it has no weight transfer. Slaps can be performed to the front, side, or back.
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Shuffle
“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a song sang in the 1933 film of the musical 42nd Street. Shuffles are simple brushes in any direction.
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Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Using cues and feedback to learn tap technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner.
Learning Tap Technique
The beginning tap class is all about learning basic technique, or how to perform a specific step in a consistent manner. Technique involves correct performance as well as incorporation of movement principles. Beyond learning technique, you add timing and quality to movement to develop clarity in performance, conveying a style that radiates musicality and artistry.
Using Cues and Feedback
During class, several strands of feedback can guide your development as a performer. The teacher provides you with cues in various forms as you learn new movement. For example, cues might be in the form of instructions or imagery to help you sense the movement, or they could be rhythmic phrases indicating the timing of a step.
Most often the teacher's feedback is directed to the beginning class to help all students understand the movement or sequence. Sometimes, the teacher gives individual feedback to clarify or extend a specific student's performance. Individual feedback becomes more common during the latter part of the course.
Another type of feedback comes from your personal performance. This feedback can be kinesthetic, intellectual, or a combination. When you execute a movement, you feel how your body is moving and applying movement principles throughout a sequence. While doing the movement, you mentally track the movement timing with the music and the kinesthetic sense of doing the movement, record the experience in your movement memory, and prepare for the next movement—all at the same time. With practice over time, these processes blend to the point where you can be responsible for fine-tuning your performance of the movement.
Putting Movements in Context
Knowing the parts of a movement sequence and timing for a dance step later extends to several steps in a combination. An introductory step, one or more middle steps, and an ending step form a basic combination. Each step in the combination requires clear execution with specific timing and quality.
Memorizing Movement Sequences
As you gain experience in tap dance, the teacher eventually stops cuing your movements using action words and you become responsible for remembering movement sequences. So, you must either memorize the terminology or create your own terms for the movements and repeat them to yourself as you dance. In addition, ask yourself questions such as these:
- Which direction am I facing?
- Which leg is moving?
- In which direction is the leg moving?
- What is the position of my arms?
- In which direction is my body moving?
Repeating action words or the teacher's cues to yourself as you move helps you memorize movement. Learning this technique of self-talk in the beginning can help you integrate other elements such as technique and movement principles in time to the music. Self-talk continues to expand as exercises and combinations get longer and more complicated. Once you can perform a movement sequence, try to execute it without saying the words.
Connecting to Your Kinesthetic Sense
Connecting to your kinesthetic sense requires awareness of your body and its movement. Making this connection takes time and experience; it does not happen overnight. After you have practiced tap dance consistently with awareness for a while, your kinesthetic sense becomes part of the translation process in the language-movement connection; when you hear a tap term, your body just knows what to do and how to do it.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/41se_Main.png
Movement Memory
Movement memory covers information presented in the beginning tap class from the past, connecting it to the present and the future. Movements you perform in class are based on movement memory (also called muscle memory), which connects to developing your kinesthetic sense. This type of memory incorporates continued feedback to the basic movement to clarify the sequence of the legs or alter the arms and head in an exercise or step. Later, movement memory expands as exercises and combinations get longer, contain more steps, and increasingly become more complex. After practicing many repetitions of a movement, you can execute the movement without thinking of the various parts, yet you are able to apply feedback or add stylistic elements to enhance the movement into a more sophisticated performance.
Movement Vocabulary
As you continue to take classes, you gain the rudimentary movement vocabulary of tap. You record your movement vocabulary in a variety of ways: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and as rhythmic components. You use action words, which are linked to a tap term.
Transposing Movement
To perform tap, you must be able to execute exercises and steps on both sides of the body, or transpose movement. Although one side of your body may respond more easily than the other, the goal is to be able to execute the movement equally well on both sides.
When you perform combinations, you have to move from one direction to another direction. Sometimes a combination moves from side to side, front to back, or back to front. In some parts of the class, you may move across the floor in straight lines or on a diagonal from a back corner of the room to the opposite front corner. Some steps require you turn around yourself or to turn in a circle. Learning to transpose exercises and steps from one foot or side to the other helps to prepare you for moving in various directions.
Mental Practice
Mental practice enhances physical performance. Mental practice is similar to learning by watching, hearing, and doing. Using this technique, you visualize perfectly performing the movements to the music. When you review tap terminology during mental practice, it can support making a movement-language connection, too.
Gaining a Performance Attitude
Gaining a performance attitude means that you learn to think, act, and move like a dancer. The first step to gaining a performance attitude is to be able to perform a movement sequence and transpose it to the other side. Once you can memorize a movement and transpose it independently without relying on your teacher to demonstrate it, you can be responsible for your own movement and your teacher can build on your learning in the next class. This independence and acceleration in learning increases your confidence, which leads to developing a performance attitude.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/097/42se_Main.png
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.
Learn the styles and aesthetics of tap dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics.
Styles and Aesthetics of Tap Dance
Throughout the history of tap dance, tap dancers have created many styles and aesthetics. Some dancers have even combined other forms of dance and art to create their own style. Eccentric dancing, which includes acrobatics, snake hips, the shimmy, and any other form of contortionist movements or comedy dance, was first introduced in the style called legomania,or rubber legs (Frank 1994). Incorporating high kicks, legomania is best known (although not a tap dance number) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow, played by Ray Boger, made it famous in the performance of “If I Only Had a Brain” (Frank 1994).
Soft-Shoe
Soft-shoe, a light, graceful dance performed in a smooth, leisurely cadence in soft-soled shoes, was made famous on the vaudeville stage (Frank 1994). One of the most famous soft-shoe routines is in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng 1948), where Yosemite Sam starts shooting at Bugs Bunny's feet while telling him to dance. Bugs Bunny grabs a hat and cane and starts dancing the soft-shoe, and he soon tricks Yosemite Sam into dancing with him. Sam quickly breaks into the same dance, and he is tricked into dancing into an open mine shaft.
Buck and Wing
Buck and wing is a flashy dance combining Irish and British clog, African rhythm, and fast footwork and kicks (Frank 1994). The term buck comes from buck dancers who wore wooden soles and danced on the balls of their feet, emphasizing movement below the waist. This form is similar to a clog dance, but it is much older. The term wing comes from the ballet term meaning pigeon wing: ailes de pigeon, also known as pistolet and brisé volé(Frank 1994). Other tap dancers developed a style that incorporated jazz and ballet movement using more upper-body movements.
Classical Tap
Classical tap, also referred to as flash or swing tap, was made famous by the Nicholas Brothers, who combined tap, ballet, and jazz dance with acrobatics. This style combined upper-body movement, wild and wiggly leg movements, and sensational acrobatic stunts with percussive, syncopated footwork.
Class Acts
Unlike the acrobatics of classical tap, class acts during the turn of the 20th century were more refined. Gymnastics, splits, and flips were rarely performed in this style. This style was dominated by Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, who perfected the high-speed yet elegant close-to-the-floor style. They were known for their classic slow soft-shoe followed by a challenge dance where each would demonstrate swinging, percussive, complex steps along with a drummer.
Jazz Tap
When ragtime music (1897 and 1918) was featured in carnivals and circuses, tap dance transformed into syncopated jazz rhythms, called jazz tap. This style emphasizes precision, lightness, and speed. During the jazz age (1920s), tap dancers performed in front of swing or jazz bands with upright bodies. This became one of the fastest tap styles.
Hoofing
Hoofing is described as dancing into the floor with emphasis placed on stomps and stamps along with rhythmic percussions of the sounds, music, and syncopations. Savion Glover is a contemporary hoofer; he states that tap dance is a dance style, while hoofing is a lifestyle.
Rhythm Tap
Rhythm tap, made famous by John W. Bubbles, incorporated more percussive heel drops and lower-body movement rather than emphasizing toe taps and upper-body movement. It is more grounded and focuses more on acoustic rather than the aesthetic qualities. Gregory Hines brought back this style, incorporating both finesse and grace and demonstrating that rhythm tap's focus is always on the feet.
Musical or Broadway Tap
Also known as show tap, the musical or Broadway tap style combines Hollywood with traditional forms of tap. Its main focus is on the performance along with body formations. Broadway musicals such as Anything Goes, My One and Only, and the most popular 42nd Street showcase this style.
Funk Tap
This emerging style of tap combines hip hop with funk to create a contemporary, fun dance form. Funk tap is attracting a new generation of tap enthusiasts while preserving traditional tap technique.
Each style evolved from the many dancers that created these forms. These styles will continue to evolve as the next generation of tap dancers find and create their own style.
Learn more about Beginning Tap Dance.