Creativity and Improvisation in Tap Dance
Here is an excerpt covering the importance of improvisation and creativity in the development of tap dance and the tap dancers who added new things to tap dance. These tap dancers include Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, John Bubbles (who created sophisticated rhythms with syncopation using the heel and toe of the shoe), Honi Coles (who created long and lyrical dance phrases). This partial history of tap is from the book "Inside Tap: Technique and Improvisation for Today's Tap Dancer."
Title: Inside Tap: Technique and Improvisation for Today's Tap Dancer
Author: Anita Feldman
Excerpt:
Title: Inside Tap: Technique and Improvisation for Today's Tap Dancer
Author: Anita Feldman
Excerpt:
Improvisation and Choreography
The history of tap dance is the history of tap improvisation and creativity. Influential tap dancers did not just execute the steps of others beautifully; they expanded on ideas already developed, or they came up with entirely new ideas through improvisation and choreography. The artists I consider the greatest combined virtuosity with innovation, thrilling audiences with dancing ability and at the same time expanding tap dance as an art form.
History
A good example is Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Robinson merged meticulous technique with a vivacious and comic performance personality. A well-known anecdote that exemplifies his technique concerns an incident during a tap challenge. Bojangles asked the musicians to play an eight-measure introduction synchronized to a metronome that only they could hear. The band stopped playing but continued to listen to the metronome while Bojangles continued dancing in silence for three and a half minutes. When the band came back in, cued by the metronome, Bojangles was in perfect time.
Robinson's vital contribution, however, was his innovative development of tap. Prior to him, King Rastus Brown was the king of buck dancing. Brown used flat-footed shuffles and steps to develop countless Time Steps and seemingly miraculous breaks. "Bojangles" Robinson took the structure of these steps - six one-bar Time Steps and a two-bar break - and brought the steps from the flat foot to his own method of dancing up on the balls of the feet. When Robinson danced on the balls of his feet, the sounds produced were crisper and clearer than any tapper's before him. There was a similarity to clogging in his upright style and method of making sound - but with the added rhythmic characteristic of swing.
It is this style that tap students around the world continue to learn when they are taught traditional Time Steps. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's contribution to tap dance was honored on May 25, 1989, when Congress instituted a National Tap Dance Day on the 111th anniversary of his birth.
John Bubbles is credited with originating a new type of tap called "rhythm tap." Bubbles created complex, swinging rhythms with syncopated accents made by dropping heels and clicking toes. He did not use regular repetitions like Robinson, but sometimes extended his phrases beyond eight bars. He was an improviser able to create innumerable variations of any step on the spot. During a tap festival held in 1980, entitled "By Word of Foot," he half-jokingly said that he improvised rather than repeating set steps, so that no one could steal his dances.
Honi Coles, stylistically a very different dancer from John Bubbles, further developed the idea of extending the phrase beyond eight bars. His phrases were lyrical and lengthy, extending through the bar to make sixteen-bar phrases. Coles often concentrated on fast, subtle footwork below a beautifully turning and traveling body. In contrast to that speed, he is well known for his soft shoe, the slowest dance ever, choreographed and performed about 1946 with Cholly Atkins, his partner at that time.
- from "Inside Tap: Technique and Improvisation for Today's Tap Dancer," Anita Feldman
Robinson's vital contribution, however, was his innovative development of tap. Prior to him, King Rastus Brown was the king of buck dancing. Brown used flat-footed shuffles and steps to develop countless Time Steps and seemingly miraculous breaks. "Bojangles" Robinson took the structure of these steps - six one-bar Time Steps and a two-bar break - and brought the steps from the flat foot to his own method of dancing up on the balls of the feet. When Robinson danced on the balls of his feet, the sounds produced were crisper and clearer than any tapper's before him. There was a similarity to clogging in his upright style and method of making sound - but with the added rhythmic characteristic of swing.
It is this style that tap students around the world continue to learn when they are taught traditional Time Steps. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's contribution to tap dance was honored on May 25, 1989, when Congress instituted a National Tap Dance Day on the 111th anniversary of his birth.
John Bubbles is credited with originating a new type of tap called "rhythm tap." Bubbles created complex, swinging rhythms with syncopated accents made by dropping heels and clicking toes. He did not use regular repetitions like Robinson, but sometimes extended his phrases beyond eight bars. He was an improviser able to create innumerable variations of any step on the spot. During a tap festival held in 1980, entitled "By Word of Foot," he half-jokingly said that he improvised rather than repeating set steps, so that no one could steal his dances.
Honi Coles, stylistically a very different dancer from John Bubbles, further developed the idea of extending the phrase beyond eight bars. His phrases were lyrical and lengthy, extending through the bar to make sixteen-bar phrases. Coles often concentrated on fast, subtle footwork below a beautifully turning and traveling body. In contrast to that speed, he is well known for his soft shoe, the slowest dance ever, choreographed and performed about 1946 with Cholly Atkins, his partner at that time.
- from "Inside Tap: Technique and Improvisation for Today's Tap Dancer," Anita Feldman