Dance Studio 18 in Sacramento CA offers Tap dance lessons in Sacramento CA. All ages and experience levels are welcome. Call today about Tap dance lessons in Sacramento CA.

A HISTORY OF TAP DANCING:

Tap Dance sprang from U.S. soil and would be made popular by dancers like "Daddy" Thomas Rice" (white) and "Zip Coon" who started the popularity of Negro-Minstrel dance with his dances of "Jump Jim Crow" and Zip Coon. Before these dancers offered their renditions of these dances, Master Juba (William Henry Lane) who was known as "the dancinest fellow ever-was" and is described as doing a tap type dance (but was more of a clog.) Later, the great minstrel man Barney Fagan is often times referred to as the "Father of Tap."

Tap dancing started with slaves who would beat out rhythms and dance on river boats. Plantation owners called these dancers Levee Dancers thru out the south, these levee dancers would wear shoes as well as not. Levee dancers would find fame with the minstrel shows around 1830 and would hire them to perform to the Negro ditties, however, most of these performers were actually white men who would wear face paint, (known as "Blackface") and perform these dances. The Black Bottom has been credited to contributing to the "Modern Tap Dance Musical Phrasing," with it's "Off Beat" rhythms.

Tap dance and Clog are very similar, mainly because Tap has deep roots into Clog dance. The most difficult of the Irish clogs are the Irish Jigs, Hornpipes and reels. In some of these the feet can tap the floor more than seventy times in fifteen seconds. In Clog dancing, no thought is given to facial, line expressions and the arms are kept motionless. The Clog dance almost came to oblivion because of the mixing of the Clog and Shuffle dances of the African-Americans today known as Tap by the end of the 19th century. 1900 to 1920 were the years modern tap had evolved.