Arlene Croce On Tap Dancing
Arlene Croce, former dance critic of The New Yorker, has taken time away from her ages-aborning book on Balanchine to contribute a generous, engaging essay on tap dancing to The New York Review of Books. She writes: ‘Probably the first dance anyone ever did was a tap dance. Beating the feet on the ground was elementary communication; doing it in time was a pleasure. The tribal dances of sub-Saharan Africa amazed Europeans with their rhythmic exactness as long ago as the eleventh century. The dancing was monitored by the beating of drums, a practice that survives in modern-day performances in which dancer and drummer exchange signals and rhythms. In these purely percussive conversations the art has its most refined, most radical expression.’ Pictured is a photo from the Everett Collection of the Broadway tap-infused show, “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk.”
