Tap Dance | Origin, History, Styles, & Facts - Britannica

Vaudeville

In the early 20th century, vaudeville variety shows moved to the entertainment forefront, and tap dancers such as Greenlee and Drayton, Pat Rooney, Sr., and George White traveled the country. A number of family acts formed, including that of the future Broadway actor, producer, and songwriter George M. Cohan, who with his sister, mother, and father formed the Four Cohans. The Covan brothers together with their wives formed the Four Covans, one of the most sensational fast tap acts ever. The comedian and dancer Eddie Foy, Sr., appeared with his seven tap-dancing children, the Seven Little Foys. By the late 1910s, more than 300 theatres around the country hosted vaudeville acts.

According to the producer Leonard Reed, throughout the 1920s “there wasn’t a show that didn’t feature tap dancing. If you couldn’t dance, you couldn’t get a job!” Nightclubs, vaudeville, and musicals all featured tap dancers, whose names often appeared on the many marquees that illuminated New York’s Broadway. Stars of the day, including Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele, brought yet more light to the “Great White Way” with their elegant dancing. Bill Robinson, known for dancing on the balls of his feet (the toe taps) and for his exquisite “stair dance,” was the first Black tap dancer to break through the Broadway colour line, becoming one the best-loved and highest-paid performers of his day.

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Because this was an era when tap dancing was a common skill among performers, a tap dancer had to create something unique to be noticed. The Berry Brothers’ act, for example, included rhythmic, synchronized cane twirling and dazzling acrobatics. Cook and Brown had one of the finest knockabout acts. King, King, and King danced in convict outfits, chained together doing close-to-the-floor fast tap work. Buster West tap-danced in “slap shoes”—oversized clown-style shoes that, because of their extended length, slapped audibly on the floor during a routine—and did break dancing decades before it had a name. Will Mahoney tap-danced on a giant xylophone.

The “challenge”—in which tap dancers challenged one another to a dancing “duel”—had been a major part of the tap dancer’s education from the beginning. It filtered into many theatrical acts. Possibly the finest exponents of the challenge were the Four Step Brothers, whose act consisted of furious, flying steps, then a moment when each attempted to top the others.

From the outset, tap dancers have stretched the art form, dancing to a wide variety of music and improvising new styles. Among these innovative styles were flash (dance movements that incorporated acrobatics and were often used to finish a dance); novelty (the incorporation into a routine of specialty props, such as jump ropes, suitcases, and stairs); eccentric, legomania, and comedy (each of which used the body in eccentric and comic ways to fool the eye and characteristically involved wild and wiggly leg movements); swing tap, also known as classical tap (combining the upper body movement found in 20th-century ballet and jazz with percussive, syncopated footwork, a style used extensively in the movies); class (precision dancing performed by impeccably dressed dancers); military (the use of military marching and drum rhythms); and rhythm, close floor, and paddle and roll (each of which emphasized footwork using heel and toe taps, typically of a rapid and rhythmic nature).

Key People: John Bubbles Savion Glover Master Juba Gregory Hines Eleanor Powell (Show more) Related Topics: dance soft-shoe buck-and-wing (Show more) See all related content

For each one of these styles there were hundreds of dancers creating a unique version. John Bubbles, for instance, went down in history as the “Father of Rhythm Tap.” Though he may not have been the very first tap dancer to use the heel tap to push rhythm from the 1920s jazz beat to the 1930s swing beat, he certainly was the most influential; generations of dancers learned his style. Three young dancers from Philadelphia—the Condos Brothers (Frank, Nick, and Steve)—became legendary among dancers for their exceptionally fast, rhythmic footwork; few tap dancers ever achieved Nick’s mastery of a difficult move he is credited with inventing known as the five-tap wing. Of the eccentric and legomania dancers, Buddy Ebsen, Henry (“Rubber Legs”) Williams, and Hal Leroy stand out. A unique style was invented by one of tap’s greatest dancers, Clayton (“Peg Leg”) Bates. After losing his leg at age 12, he reinvented tap to fit his own specifications—a peg and a shoe with two taps.