Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely performed in musical theater. Rhythm tap focuses on musicality, and practitioners consider themselves to be a part of the jazz tradition.
Gregory Oliver Hines was an American dancer, actor, choreographer, and singer. He is one of the most celebrated tap dancers of all time. As an actor, he is best known for Wolfen (1981), The Cotton Club (1984), White Nights (1985), Running Scared (1986), The Gregory Hines Show (1997–1998), playing Ben on Will & Grace (1999–2000), and for voicing Big Bill on the Nick Jr. Channel animated children's television program Little Bill (1999–2004).
Savion Glover is an American tap dancer, actor, and choreographer.
The Nicholas Brothers were an entertainment act composed of brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who excelled in a variety of dance techniques, primarily between the 1930s and 1950s. Best known for their unique interpretation of a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing", they were also considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day, if not all time. Their virtuoso performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" featured in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather has been praised as one of the greatest dance routines ever captured on film.
Dianne Walker, also known as Lady Di, is an American tap dancer. Her thirty-year career spans Broadway, television, film, and international dance concerts. Walker is the artistic director of TapDancin, Inc. in Boston, Massachusetts.
James Titus Godbolt, known professionally as Jimmy Slyde and also as the "King of Slides", was an American tap dancer known for his innovative tap style mixed with jazz.
Charles “Honi” Coles was an American actor and tap dancer, who was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003. He had a distinctive personal style that required technical precision, high-speed tapping, and a close-to-the-floor style where "the legs and feet did the work". Coles was also half of the professional tap dancing duo Coles and Atkins, whose specialty was performing with elegant style through various tap steps such as "swing dance", "over the top", "bebop", "buck and wing", and "slow drag".
Arthur Chester Duncan was an American tap dancer, also called an "Entertainer's Entertainer," known for his stint as a performer on The Lawrence Welk Show from 1964 to 1982. This, along with his earlier inclusion on The Betty White Show in 1954 and with the help of White herself, made him the first African-American regular on a variety television program. He performed all over the world, and notably at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
Maurice Robert Hines Jr. is an American actor, director, singer, and choreographer. He is the older brother of dancer Gregory Hines.
Ernest "Brownie" Brown was an African American tap dancer and last surviving member of the Original Copasetics. He was the dance partner of Charles "Cookie" Cook, with whom he performed from the days of vaudeville into the 1960s, and of Reginald McLaughlin, also known as "Reggio the Hoofer," from 1996 until Brown's death in 2009.
Chloe Arnold is an American dancer and Emmy-nominated choreographer, actress, director, and producer. She is best known internationally as a tap dancer, and was seen on Season 11 of FOX's So You Think You Can Dance with her company Chloe Arnold's Syncopated Ladies.
Rusty Frank is an American tap dancer, producer, writer, choreographer, lindy hopper, historian and tap-dance preservationist.
Bunny Briggs was an American tap dancer who was inducted into the American Tap Dancing Hall of Fame in 2006.
The American Tap Dance Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose primary goal is the presentation and teaching of tap dance. Its original stated purpose was to provide an "international home for tap dance, perpetuate tap as a contemporary art form, preserve it through performance and an archival library, provide educational programming, and establish a formal school for tap dance."
Peggy Spina Tap Company is a tap dance company that first presented in 1981 at Cami Hall by its founder and artistic director, Peggy Spina. The company performs annually with the Joel Forrester Jazz Quartet in the Spina SoHo Loft on Prince Street in New York City. Her choreography in the 1980s was described by The New York Times as "particularly fascinating", including "excited outbursts and changes of rhythm as if Miss Spina were a conversationalist with her feet who had suddenly thought of new ideas", although the same review described her as "less convincing as a choreographer for ensembles." Reviews of the company performances and choreography in the 1990s indicated "the interplay of tap rhythms...was like sophisticated repartee." Her company signature pieces include, "Stop the Music," known for "the tightness of the taps and the relentless locomotive surge of Ms. Spina's choreography and Mr. Forrester's score".
Leonard Harper was a producer, stager, and choreographer in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s.
Michelle Dorrance is an American tap dancer, performer, choreographer, teacher and director. Awarded a MacArthur "Genius Grant", she is the Founder and Artistic Director of Dorrance Dance. Dorrance is known for her creative ensemble choreography, rhythm tap style and ambitious collaborative projects with fellow tap dance choreographers and musicians. She is currently a 2017 Choreographic Fellow at New York City Center and an Artist in Residence at the American Tap Dance Foundation. Dorrance lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Tony Carl Waag is a tap dancer, director and producer living in New York City. In 2008, he was dubbed "The Mayor of Tap City" by TheaterMania. He is currently the Executive/Artistic Director of the American Tap Dance Foundation.
Tap City, the New York City Tap Festival, was launched in 2001 in New York City. Held annually for approximately one week each summer, the festival features tap dancing classes, choreography residencies, panels, screenings, and performances as well as awards ceremonies, concert performances, and Tap it Out, a free, public, outdoor event performed in Times Square by a chorus of dancers. The goal of the Festival is to establish a "higher level of understanding and examination of tap’s storied history and development.”
Harriet "Quicksand" Browne was an American tap dancer, educator and choreographer who was best known for her innovation in sanding. Browne got a job dancing in the chorus but shortly afterwards got pregnant and had a son, which put a temporary stop to her dancing career. After the birth of her son, she resumed dancing as a soloist and as a member of the chorus in clubs around Chicago. During the 1950s, she toured with Cab Calloway's band. After she got a job in the chorus at a club in Greenwich Village, although she continued to tour, she settled in New York City.