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What I love about tap: Max Pollak reflects on his favorite moments in tap history.

Publication: Dance Magazine
Publication Date: 01-MAY-08 		Format: Online
Delivery: Immediate Online Access

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

One of my favorite tap scenes from a movie is a crazy up from-underneath-through-a-glass-floor shot of three guys in tuxedoes wearing oxford shoes without taps in a Busby Berkeley extravaganza from the 1930s. It shows up close the flying feet, stomping soles, and the seemingly floating torsos of three great dancers executing a breakneck wing combination. This ingenious shot sticks in my mind because it illustrates two powerful aspects of tap dance: the rock-solid athletic dexterity, and the sophisticated musical confidence necessary to pull off such technical wizardry with style and grace.

What makes tap so different from other dance styles, even percussive ones like flamenco and Irish step dancing? It displays the ingenuity of people who over the last 160 years or so have merged several very different movement aesthetics from distant continents into a brilliantly versatile form of expression immediately recognizable as horn in the U.S.A.

Many of us traveling ministers of the percussive sole are often...

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