Tap dancing America : a cultural history / Constance Valis Hill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hill, Constance Valis.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tap dancing--United States--History.

Tap dancing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (612 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press, 2010.

Summary:

This is the first comprehensive, fully documented, intercultural history of tap dance, a uniquely American art form, that explores all aspects of the intricate musical and social exchange that evolved from Afro-Irish percussive step dances like the jig, gioube, buck-and-wing, and juba to the work of contemporary tap luminaries. Tap dance evolved from the oral traditions and expressive cultures of the West Africans and the Irish that converged and collided in America, and was perpetuated by such key features as the tap challenge—any competition or showdown in which dancers compete against each other before an audience of spectators or judges. The book begins with an account of a buck dance challenge between Bill (“Bojangles”) Robinson and Harry Swinton at Brooklyn’s Bijou Theatre, in 1900, and proceeds decade by decade through the twentieth century. Vividly described are tap’s musical styles and steps—from buck-and-wing and ragtime stepping at the turn of the century; jazz tapping to the rhythms of hot jazz, swing, and bebop in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s; to hip-hop-inflected hitting and hoofing in heels (high and low) from the 1990s up to today. Tap dancing has long been considered “a man’s game,” and this book is the first history to highlight such outstanding female artists as Ada Overton Walker, Kitty O’Neill, and Alice Whitman, at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the pioneering women composers of the tap renaissance, in the 1970s and 1980s, and the hard-hitting rhythm-tapping women of the millennium.

Contents:

Trickster Gods and rapparees (1650-1900)

Buck-and-wing (turn of the century)

Over-the-top and in-the-trenches (teens)

Simply full of jazz (twenties)

Swing time (thirties)

Jumpin' jive (forties)

Beat, bebop, birth of the cool (fifties)

Tap happenings (sixties)

Nostalgia, and all that tap (seventies)

Black and blue (eighties)

Noise and funk (nineties)

Hoofing in heels (millennium).

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 391-408) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786612731112

9780199745890

0199745897

9780190225384

0190225386

9781282731110

1282731114

9780199742189

0199742189

OCLC:

609850545

Publisher Number:

2027/heb31419 hdl