Notes:

Tap- Dance the pressure right off him. (Buster Brown)

“No messages.” (Jack Stanley)

“vernacular dance”

By the 5th century and before there were already lively “Step Dances” in Ireland.

These were early forms of what would become the “Irish Jig”

· hard shoes

· intricate leg movements

· upper body erect and motionless

· tapping with toe & heels

By the 1700, took on competitive characteristics

· Stresses innovation and improvisation

· In England, popular form of “recreation” during industrialization as factory workers would entertain themselves.

· Tapping their wooden “Clogs” on the cobblestone streets outside during lunch breaks.

· Development of the Lancashire Clog.

· Standardized from of competition.

· Became known as “Shoe Music”

For increased flexibility, leather soles replaced the clogs.

Pennies were screwed to the toes and heels.

These later became replaced by metal “taps.”

Meanwhile in Africa…

· Ancient dance traditions evolved and thrived.

· Stress bending, flexing, crouching, agility, mobile torsos and isolations.

· These dances were highly structured and required training to achieve proficiency.

Pygmy, Congolese, Dahomean, Groups excelled in different body isolations.

· Bare flat-footed stomping on hard ground.

· No real sound or distinction between toe or heel sounds.

· Complicated percussion provided by complex drumming patterns.

· Improvisation emphasized.

· Upper body flexible and as ease.

Slave Trade

Some “exchange” on the decks of the ships.

1739 Slave Insurrection (Stono Virginia)

Group of "Contrabands" at Foller's House
Cumberland Landing, Virginia,
James F. Gibson, photographer,
May 14, 1862.

Early on the morning of Sunday, September 9, 1739, twenty black Carolinians met near the Stono River, approximately twenty miles southwest of Charleston.

At Stono's bridge, they took guns and powder from Hutcheson's store and killed the two storekeepers they found there.

"With cries of 'Liberty' and beating of drums," historian Peter H. Wood writes in the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, "the rebels raised a standard and headed south toward Spanish St. Augustine…

Along the road they gathered black recruits, burned houses, and killed white opponents, sparing one innkeeper who was 'kind to his slaves.'" T

Largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies prior to the American Revolution.

Late that afternoon, planters riding on horseback caught up with the band of sixty to one hundred slaves.

More than twenty white Carolinians and nearly twice as many black Carolinians were killed before the rebellion was suppressed. As a consequence of the uprising, white lawmakers imposed a moratorium on slave imports and enacted a harsher slave code.

Slaves frequently resorted to insurrection, first in the British colonies and later in the southern United States. At least 250 insurrections have been documented; between 1780 and 1864, ninety-one African-Americans were convicted of insurrection in Virginia alone.

The Confessions of Nat Turner
Richmond
Thomas R. Gray, publisher, 1832.
Slavery — the Peculiar Institution in African American Odyssey

Slave Act of 1740- Drums forbidden to African Slaves

· Hand Claps and Foot Beats had to provided the percussion provided by drumming.

· Slave owners had slaves dance for the owner’s entertainment.

· Slaves imitated the “Minuets, etc” of the owners.

· Cake awarded as prize to encourage lively competition (Origins of the “Cake Walk”)

Minstrels

The slave dances were adapted theatrically in 1828 in the first blackface minstrel show, in the dancing of Thomas "Daddy" Rice.

Thomas Darmouth Rice -Jim Crow

Slave w/ deformed shoulder, stiff leg, limp.

“Jumping Jim Crow”

Wheel about, turn about

Do Jis so

And every time I wheel about

I jump Jim Crow

Rice blacken face with burnt cork, portray “white” constructions of back slave mannerisms.

(Bill Cosby’s Critical Remark about Def Comedy Jam stuff)

1840’s

Dance Competitions between Black and Whites in New York City

“Low” Entertainment- Bars and Brothels

One famous Example:

William Henry Lane a.k.a Juba, King of All Dancers

Only black dancer accepted by white minstrel companies;

taught by “Uncle” Jim Lowe, a black jig and reel dancers.

VS

John Diamond (White Irishman of dance renown).

Juba went on to tour Europe and gained reputation as

“the only authentic master of African American Dance.”

German Immigrants introduced their own dances (Polka, Waltz,) and percussive dances from Bavaria.

Melded to become the forerunner of the soft-shoe.

In late 19th-century minstrel shows and showboat routines, two techniques were popularized:

1. a fast style in wooden-sole shoes, also called buck-and-wing, exemplified by the duo of Jimmy Doyle and Harland Dixon;

2. and soft-shoe, a smooth, leather-sole style made famous by George Primrose.

These styles gradually coalesced, and by the 1920s metal plates, or taps, had been added to leather-soled shoes.

On the Minstrel Stage, The Waltz-clog became the “essence of Old Virginia” later just called the essence.

Experimentation among Clog dancers with Syncopation and Swing Rhythms (Black and White)

Soft Shoe - George Primrose made the soft shoe elegant- influenced Mistral Theater, survived the transition to Vaudeville.

Civil War Brought and end to the “Funniness” of racial competition and stereotyping.

Vaudeville:

Mistral Theater too “rough” for Lady entertainers

"Sex Appeal" absent from Minstrel Theater and nearly so in early Vaudeville

“Need for “Family Entertainment”--Vaudeville

1881 Tony Pastor 14th Street Theater

· eight acts- comedy, acrobatics, song and dance.

· Pat Rooney credited with “The Buffalo”

· Eddie Horan Walking Waltz Clog with a cane soon became standard.

· Women started to become accepted as popular entertainers.

o Kitty O’Neil (Sand Dance)

Synchronized Tap: Florodora Girls of 1900 (a sextet)

George M. Cohan, "Little Johnny Jones" 1903

George M. Cohan, youngest of the four.

· Plot with singing and Tap dancing

· Capitalized on and re-enforced a growing sense of Pride in United States

· Give My Regards of Broadway & Yankee Doodle Boy

Later the Yama-yama Girls of 1905

Ned Wayburn's Minstrel Miss of 1906

1907 Florenz Ziefeld's first "Follies"

· after the Follies Berge`re of Paris

· "review" loosely related series of variety acts.

· 50 chorus girls dancing in unison (predated by the Tiller girls of London music halls, but the first to tap.)

Important Introductions:

Fanny Brice 1910

W.C. Fields 1915

Will Rogers 1917

Ned Wayburn's "Passing Show of 1918" -Fred and Adele Astaire

George White's "Scandals of 1920" written and composed by George Gershwin

Condos Brothers - The Five tap wing

Double Helix: TOBA Circuit; Theater Owners’ Booking Association

Just before WW1 (1917) South and Southwest

Nickname “Tough on Black Artists”

At its peak in the 1920’s connected over 300 theaters

Black Tappers found and stage and audience to develop their art.

King Rastus Brown -flat-footed hoofing style. “Buck Dancing- tap performed to syncopated rhythm”

In the 1920s and 1930s black dancers contributed to the development of new styles of tap dance, and black dance teams became popular for their acrobatic, often satirical acts.

John Bubbles popularized a slower, more syncopated style of tap dance. Prominent dance teams of the era included Slap and Happy (Harold Daniels and Leslie Irvin) and Stump and Stumpy (James Cross and Harold Cromer).

Racial Integration

When Robinson arrived in New York in 1900, he challenged the In Old Kentucky star tap dancer Harry Swinton to a Buck-dancing contest and won.

From 1902-1914, he teamed with George W. Cooper. Bound by the "two-colored" rule in vaudeville, which restricted blacks to performing in pairs, they performed together on the Keith and Orpheum circuits, but did not wear blackface makeup that performers customarily used.

Act split up in 1915

Performed in vaudeville from 1914-1927

Robinson launched his solo career

One of the few African-Americans to headline at New York's prestigious Palace Theatre. Introduced in 1918, was distinguished by its showmanship and sound, each step emitting a different pitch and rhythm.

· Light and exacting footwork

· brought tap “up on its toes”

· Contrast to from an earlier flat-footed shuffling style

· delicate perfection.

A founding member of the Negro Actors Guild of America

· Broadway fame came with the all-black revue, Blackbirds of 1928

· Brown Buddies (1930)

· Blackbirds of 1933

· All in Fun (1940)

· Memphis Bound (1945)

· His first film, Dixiana (1930) had a predominantly white cast

· Harlem is Heaven (1933) was the first all-black film ever made.

14 movies all in all

Jazz provided further rhythmic complexity, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson became America's most famous tap dancer.

Success of Black and White reviews on Broadway in the 20's brought about a fusion of twin stains of tap.

Black Tapper Buddy Bradley- Broadway Choreographer- opened a studio in 1928- among his students

Mae West

Ed Wynn

Ruby Keeler

Adele and Fred Astaire

Lucille Ball

Paul Draper.

Bradley himself was influenced by White Jazz musicians (Frank Trumbauer and Bix Beiderbecke)

Betty Bruce- Child prodigy making the Corps De Ballet of the Metropolitan Opera House at age 6, became a celebrated tapper who incorporated ballet technique into her tap style.

Hoofer's Club- 131 Street in Harlem (20's, 30's and 40's) frequented by Black Tappers King Rastus Brown, John Bubbles, Bill Robinson, Bunny Briggs, and Baby Laurence. also white professional would come as well. Good-natured competition.

Black and White was kept a part.

The style was further expanded in the 1930s and 1940s, when dancers such as Fred Astaire, Paul Draper, Ray Bolger, and, in the late 1950s, Gene Kelly added movements from ballet and modern dance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s interest in tap dance underwent a resurgence.