Inheritances

Shingle dancing is a form of solo dancing akin to tap dancing, of African American origin, usually associated with old-time music. A shingle dancer dances on a small wooden platform (typically no more than about 30 inches square), sometimes equipped with a bell or a loose piece of metal to allow additional percussive effects.

Shingle dancing

The 1739 slave insurrection in Stono, Va.--triggered when African slaves drum-beat a message of revolt to alert slaves at neighboring plantations--led to passage of the 1740 Slave Act, forbidding slaves from beating drums, blowing horns or the like. To substitute for musical instruments, hand claps and foot beats were used, creating a music form where dancers made their own rhythms and sounds.

These new rhythms were subsequently applied derisively to European dances on plantations, frequently for the amusement of white owners. For example, the Cakewalk, where a cake prize was given to the slave who performed the fanciest walk before a white audience, was a parody of the minuet grand march at whites fancy parties. Slaves also copied techniques of Irish jig dancers visiting the plantations.

In Louisville, Ky., in 1828, a white dancer calling himself "Jumping Jim Crow" did a parody-in-blackface of this new slave dancing. The minstrel show was born; whites parodied blacks parodying whites. In 1844, a free-born black dancer, Juba, King of All Dancers, fused European steps with African rhythms before white audiences in public competitions with an Irish jig dancer; he was the major black minstrel-era dancer in America and Europe.

Buck dancing was the earliest combination of basic shuffle and tap steps, performed to syncopated rhythms, in which the accent is placed on the down or off beat--a style derived from African tribal music. There were two distinct dance techniques by late 19th century, buck-and-wing and soft-shoe. The former was active, fast and danced in wooden or hard leather-soled shoes. Soft-shoe was relaxed and smooth. It developed from dances like the German-Irish waltz clog, fusing German immigrant folk dancing with Irish jigs, and from slow-tempoed shuffles like the Essence of Old Virginia.

Synchronized tap dancing was introduced by the Floradora Girls in 1900, and the term tap and step dancing was introduced in a 1902 minstrel show. Metal cleats were now worn on heels and toes of leather shoes. As vaudeville supplanted minstrel shows, tap dancing developed with great vigor in two different paths, one white and one black. One led from George M. Cohan to Fred Astaire. The other produced the great Bill Robinson, known as "Bojangles," a contraction for bone jangler or a musician who beats time by clapping together a pair of bones. He was the first black dancer to headline his own show on Broadway in 1930; he made 14 films.

Tap dance did not develop in linear progression from a single ethnic source; it is a uniquely American creation resulting from a blending of cultures, of Old World traditions and New World imagination, and drew equally from Europeans and Africans to make a new dance form.



Tap dance as it is known today did not emerge until roughly the 1920s, when "taps," nailed or screwed onto shoe soles at the toes and heels, became popular. During this time entire chorus lines in shows such as Shuffle Along (1921) first appeared on stage with "tap shoes," and the dance they did became known as tap dancing.

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.

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).

The popularity of tap dancing began to decline in the 1950s. This change is often attributed to a series of events in the 1940s. In 1942 Agnes de Mille introduced narrative ballet into the Broadway show with Oklahoma. Although in Rodeo (1942) she had also been the first to introduce tap dance into ballet, her billing as a "choreographer" and the false competition with ballet made tap seem "hokey and pass . Another factor in the waning of tap dance was a dramatic drop in nightclub attendance, as men and women who had come home from service overseas concentrated on getting an education, starting careers, and raising families.



There were two distinct dance techniques by late 19th century, buck-and-wing and soft-shoe.

Tap gained popularity after the Civil War as a part of traveling minstrel shows



It was not until the period between 1900 and 1920 that tap dance emerged as a dance form in its own right. With it, tap dance shoes were born. In the earliest days of tap dance, pennies or hobnails were hammered into the toe and heels of shoes, to create the tap sound as performers danced. Before 1910, tap dancers wore shoes made with leather uppers and wooden soles, so that the wood tapped out the beat. After 1910, it became the fashion to apply metal taps to the bottoms of tap dance shoes.