Tap dancing. It's not really a thing anymore, is it?

I shake my head at all the "dancing" on TikTok that doesn't really include a lot of foot movement, mostly upperbody and hands.

Tell that to Casey Nicholaw.

Seeing this thread, the first thing that came to mind is Jack challenging Ben (Gregory Hines) to a tap dance-off on Will & Grace.

I always loved it.

My mom always tells me a story about taking tap dancing classes at a neighbors house and being upset that everyone else already knew what to do, but I find it hard to believe this happened because we live in a country redneck area and this was in the 2000s. I just can’t imagine anyone around being experienced tap dancers. Maybe there’s a trailer park Fred Astaire out there.

Damn Gregory is attractive and cool.

I hate to exercise...

I think it died in the 1970s

I studied tap as a child in the 80s and then in college. I liked it. Pretty much anyone can be a tap dancer regardless of body type or age. You just have to practice. About 10 years ago, I went to Broadway Dance Center and started taking tap and ballet lessons again (in my 40s) for fun. Lilla Crawford was in my class. She had just played Annie on Broadway and filmed Into the Woods but the teacher kept getting upset at her for fooling around with her friend. I should go take lessons again. I'm 51. Probably too old to try ballet again but you can always do tap.

R5 are you a teenager? I'm surprised you know what tap dance is.

Nowadays a black man tap dancing might be called “problematic” by woke media and black Twitter. I said what I said. And not intelligent woke media, but the reductive type—you know the majority of it.

I hate to exercise, but I love to tap!

Lucy was going to star in TapDance Fever but Gary talked her out of it.

Long ago I did take tap for several years in a small dance studio from a middle-aged man my mother said was a bachelor. He was very elegant, almost balletic at times. I had to walk quite a ways back and forth, a few miles, something that would not happen today I think. Thoroughly enjoyed it and will always consider myself a tap dancer.

I love the sound of it.

Me too r16. It's probably what most attracted me to old Busby Berkeley musicals

I like tap dancing.

[quote] I hate to exercise...

...but I LOVE to tap!

I would have *killed* for...

I admired Gregory Hines, not only for his talent but the obvious love and appreciation he had for other tap dancers. He was also a talented actor. The dance scenes with him and Mikhail Barysnikov in White Nights were fun to watch.

Below is a clip of Hines and Davis Jr. In the movie Tap.

R21 and he was sexy as fuck.

Yes, he was!

Here's a clip from 1990 from the Sammy Davis Jr. 60th Anniversary Celebration, with a dance tribute from Hines to Davis Jr., followed up by a two-minute tap dance routine with Davis Jr. on stage dancing with him (beginning at 6 min.). This was just three months before Sammy Davis Jr. died from throat cancer.

I’ve had sufficient.

David Garrison definitely had skills...

and David Garrison as Norman

If you’ve got bottle caps and shoes you can tap!

If Savion Glover stayed on course, he might've brought some new fans to the form. As it stands, there are no young tap performers who can capture the imagination of the younger generation.

I remember Mama Harper and Aunt Effie doing a rap routine one time.

*tap

Was "that old soft shoe" the training version? I remember Nanette Fabray doing it on Carol Burnett.

I hated Fabray.

Didn't tap get looked down on after Oklahoma? I remember the (return of) tapping being part of Nanette's appeal and it seems like it hasn't gone away.

I take Tap, Jazz, Ballet, Modern and Hip-Hop!

Tap Dancing was already out of style in the 70's. I remember Laverne and Shirley episodes back then and the creator Garry Marshall kept trying to bring it back. But it was so cringe at that point, he's lucky he had applause sighs flickering on high. In the 70's it was about as popular as trying to bring back Vaudeville.

Savion and company made it cool by using hip hop music.

Even FOLLIES had a tap number.

Tap came back to Broadway as early as 1969 when it was added to That's How Young I Feel for Annie.

The utter corniness that was Riverdance (The perms! The mullets! The pre-recorded and amplified taps! Michael Flatley!) hammered the final nail in the coffin of Tap.

When was the last time you bought tickets to a tap dancing show?

The tap rhythms do not flow well with the percussive elements of today's music production. They suited Anne Miller.

I always appreciate a large scale tap dancing scene onstage in a musical like Crazy For You and 42nd Street but those are actively set “in the past”.

I wish my mom had given me tap lessons instead of piano lessons which is what she wanted. They knew I was nuts about tap dancing and horses from toddlerhood.

When it comes to rug rats, piano is a lot less grating on the ears than tap dancing little baaastards.

Sutton Foster taps, spins and belts the living hell out the ANYTHING GOES finale.

Reno's a zesty broad, not Miss Tops in Taps.

Maybe it will provide employment in the next Depression.

There are quite a few tap numbers with Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor in Singing in the Rain. Masterpieces.

My brother is 6’5 and73 years old and has been taking tap lessons for around 15 years.

A Christmas Story had some good tap dancing and little Luke Spring got a rave in the Times.

What next? Lamenting the decline of the genteel art of crafting mourning jewelry from the hair of deceased loved ones?

I'm old, but...

Watching a mass tap dancing routine is thrilling…something about all that rhythmic vibration

I thought it was just one of those things that only little kids do, like karate.

Annie (1982), “Let’s Go to the Movies”

“Always happy endings…”

I miss tap but ballroom dancing is pretty much out of style too. Even break dancing is out of date.

Let's face it. Tap isn't sexy.

[quote]Tap isn't sexy.

It's not dead. It occasionally shows up on Broadway shows and, if excellent, gets a deserved ovation.

R56 Are you sure?

Thank you, R57! Walken was really something.

Cholly Atkins and Charles “Honi” Coles.

Watch it done right.

42nd Street took my breath away the couple times I saw it (I know, Mary!). The larger the dance ensemble, the better. I was never a fan of "We're in the Money," but the Audition opening scene and actual 42nd Street number are amazing. All those tap shoes hitting the stage floor is a beautiful sound. Especially when you can feel the vibrations in your chest.

Honi Coles and Tommy Tune from “My One and Only” on the Merv Griffin Show 1983

Harold and Fayard Nicholas from The Great American Broadcast

R63 Corrected

Tappa, tappa, tappa!

Never liked it. So Vaudeville.

I had tap dance lessons as a kid in the early 70s. My two friends and I put on a performance at Aliso Elementary School in Carpinteria. I remember we were dressed as tramps, but I would hardly be able to do it now.

r66 see r20

[quote] Tap Dancing was already out of style in the 70's. I remember Laverne and Shirley episodes back then and the creator Garry Marshall kept trying to bring it back. But it was so cringe at that point, he's lucky he had applause sighs flickering on high. In the 70's it was about as popular as trying to bring back Vaudeville.

Maybe I think of the '70s differently. The big revival of No, No, Nannette on Broadway was in 1971. The movie, That's Entertainment (featuring some tap numbers), was in 1974 and was a big hit.

I saw nannette Fabray in a summer stock version of No, No, Nannette in the '70s. I remember her out in front of the big group of dancers, tapping, to this day.

There was a revival of Good News in 1974. (Don't know if it included tap dancing. Probably.)

Tommy Tune tap danced in Seesaw (1973 or '74).

The movie of The Boy Friend came out in '71. Etc.

R70 Good News did not have tap dancing.

One of the Fosse numbers from Dancin was I Wanna Be A Dancin Man. As Arlene Croce noted, instead of tapping, the dancers slap their thighs numb because it's the best they can do. There was no tapping in that show although Chicago has a sequence called A Tap Dance.

Sophisticated Ladies had the incredible Don't Mean a Thing number where Hinton Battle and Gregg Burge engage in a tap contest and of course, Battle went on to Tap Dance Kid.

Paula Abdul gave a minor revival in the 80s with her tapping in music videos like the delightful Opposites Attract.

Sorry, even those so called "sexy" clips are not sexy. It feels performative expecting an audience to clap at your hard work instead of actually enjoying the moment without the required applause. I put it in the same category as Vaudeville.

Of course I am sure all the old Broadway trolls now have their panties in a wad as one must never tell the truth about their bad taste in dead dance styles.

R71 Good news seems to have some here.

That's about as sexy as Lawrence Welk!

I don't think vaudeville needs to be Capitalized.

[quote]I saw nannette Fabray in a summer stock version of No, No, Nannette in the '70s.

No, no to your spelling of Nanette.

R76 Aren't you clever.

Gene Kelly was a sexy rapper

Fucking autocorrect! You know what I mean

R79 Grace Kelly was a sexy rapper?

Tap Your Troubles Away

R80 R Kelly was a-

Never mind.

It’s fancy clog dancing.

Carol Channing proving why tapping is dead.