Dancetime: Tap Dance History

Brothers present their singing, strutting, tap dancing, twirling canes, splits and acrobatic stunts in “Boarding House Blues” (1948), while Stump and Stumpy stage their comedic routine in the same film. “It Happened in Harlem” (1945) shows 2 unique tap innovators: Slick and Slack in an early form of tap dance using bare feet and bottle caps between the toes, and Juanita Pitts, one of the rare female tap soloists of the 1930’s and 1940’s.The video also features three varied chorus lines which have a special place in tap history, by exemplifying unison choreography as a creative statement, as shown in “Ten Minutes to Live” (1932), “The Musical Beauty Shop” (1930), and “Harlem is Heaven” (1932).