Tap Notes: Vaudeville = variety shows (mid-late 1800s)

o Faded out in the 20s Alcohol was sold Male and female audience Working class would see the shows Dumb acts

o Anything that didn’t use spoken wordo Acrobatics, bikes, animal actso Bunny hug, kangaroo hipo Clog in wooden shoes/wooden soleso Jig close to tappingo Pedestal dancingo Jugglerso Sand danceo Soft shoe – with or without sand

No noise – gliding images Vaudeville primarily African American TOBA- Theatre Owners Book Associates of Black Artist

o Tough On Black Artists After carnival to college which would go on to vaudeville, broadway etc. White circuit: Thomas Patricola (while playing the uke created blackface),

Pat Rooney (waltz clog and shuffle off to bufflo), Eddie Horn (cane and walking waltz clog)

Five Kellys (Gene and Fred – fast tappint) Condons Brothers (Steven – practice drills similar to drumming lightning

speed/swing and bee bop) Leonard Reed – shim sham shimmy Peg Leg Bates – flash steps – spectacularly virtuosic aerial movement

o So good that people forgot he a peg leg Buck and Bubbles – Bubbles tapped and Buck (Ford Lee Washington) was

the pianisto Clean and exact

KING ROSTAS BROWN – flat footed buck dancer all about syncopated rythms Buck = masculine Wing = feminine Buck and wing on the balls of the feet and irish influence First American tap dance: Master Juba (William Henry Lane) – Juba Dance,

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson – most famous African American tap dancer developed art of tap dancing into a delicate profession, King Rostas Brown, George Primrose – Lancashire w/o wooden soles (invented soft shoe)

Copasetics