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Global tap: the sound of tapping is heard around the world.

Article Excerpt
A young man walks onto the dance floor. He nods to the orchestra, which strikes up a stomping tune. His shoes begin to hit the floor like a drum. His feet follow the melody line, becoming conductors of the music. The dancer is hopping, chugging his heels, flat-footing through a smooth turn with outstretched arms. A shuffle-stamp-touch, then he takes a bow. Applause.

I clap and shout, too. I am elated, my brain feels a serotonin explosion as if the entire world just opened up and embraced me. Why would a simple tap dance performance have such an impact on someone who sees and dances tap every day? Because I am sitting in a traditional restaurant in Lhasa, Tibet.

The young Tibetan man was performing a traditional percussive dance from the Himalayan mountains. I was there to research Buddhism, art history, and the political climate, and this came as a beautiful surprise. Tibet was letting me and other tourists (many of them Chinese) know it spoke my language--a different accent perhaps-but a basis for mutual understanding nonetheless. This was 2001.

Now, in 2007, there are even more reasons to be optimistic as a practitioner of percussive dance: Tap has reached a new popularity worldwide. Thirty countries are represented in the International Tap Association (www.tapdance.org). Finland alone has three tap dance organizations and two annual festivals. Due to technology and the relentless enthusiasm of tap aficionados all over the world, there is now more contact between places that have a percussive dance tradition and those that did not until a short while ago. And, in cases where people do not see eye to eye politically (Cuba-U.S., Israel-Palestine, Turkey-Greece, China-Tibet), at least there can be an exchange between tap-happy citizens.

The foundation for this expansion...

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