TAPPING FEET

A look at the history of a well-known dance.

In the mid-1800s, Charles Dickens marveled at the fancy footwork of a formerly enslaved man who tapped on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. At the same time enslaved people were fleeing the South for New York City, Irish immigrants flocked to Manhattan to escape the potato famine. New York welcomed neither population, and their shared oppression and mutual love of dance brought them together. Irish Americans danced the jig with a stiff upper body; African Americans moved their whole bodies while tapping, even using some body parts as percussion instruments. As African American and Irish American dancers mixed and mingled in New York’s bustling Five Points neighborhood, William Henry Lane, a Black dancer nicknamed Master Juba, infused aspects of the Irish jig into his performance. Irish American Jack Diamond proposed a dance-off, and after Lane won, they performed together often. The book’s smaller font tells the nonfiction story, while the capitalized Broadway-like font offers a poetic, enticing commentary on tap. Lively images of George M. Cohan, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gregory Hines, and Savion Glover appear in the book, but oddly missing is Sammy Davis Jr., perhaps the most iconic Black TV tapper of the 20th century.

Inspirational and informative, this tale of two cultures might spark a love of tap in young readers.