Street Hoofin, or: I’ll Knock You Out

By Pamela Hetherington

How many times have I watched Rocky Balboa’s training montage in Rocky 1? About the same number of times I’ve watched Gregory Hines’ montage in the movie Tap and White Nights! Countless times.

Boxing and tap dancing aren't too far off from each other. Depending on the setting and what your mood is, there can be plenty of one-on-one sparring in both forms.

Tap dance grew up on the streets and the tradition of tap dance is rooted in the challenge.  Much has been said about this subject in books and documentaries, but my favorite example comes from the movie, "No Maps on My Taps." Only a tiny clip exists on Youtube, but you can still catch a glimpse of how the lifelong competition between Sandman Sims, Chuck Green and Bunny Briggs pushed them to become the best individual musicians they could be. In the personal craft of the challenge, you become an artist. Whether you are challenging someone else or yourself, the challenge is what fuels one's lifelong pursuit of the sound. As such, the parallels between tap dance and jazz music (and boxing) are crystal clear.

This is all a way into how tap dance is taught today and how most derivative teaching disconnects it from individual expression. Derivative teaching fuels imitation and therefore, fear.

When people come to class and say, "I don't want to improvise," what they really mean is, “I’m afraid I won’t look or sound like ____.” Why are we afraid to sound like ourselves in tap class?

When we teach by imitation, and therefore, from a place of fear, it is impossible to really teach the full scope of the art form. Technique is important, of course, but I'd say it's an 1/8th of this big tap-dancing pie. The other big slices of that pie are taken up by how YOU sound: how you keep time, how you swing, how you divide a beat, how you play with music, how you decide to take the floor. Even if you never challenge someone on a street corner, you have to use the shoes to contribute a sound that is uniquely your own. (In tap dance lore that I heard from Heather Cornell, Steve Condos used to say you had to "earn your shoes.")

Anyway, back to the boxing ring! Or the street corner!

Was the street corner today's version of Youtube or Instagram? It was one way to prove yourself and and get your name out there, through the most powerful form of advertising - word of mouth. It was instantaneous and in the moment. Youtube and Instagram allows for some serious editing and filtering, as we know.

In Philadelphia, we talk a lot about tap dancing on street corners, because the oral history indicates that Broad Street was the general place you wanted to be, if you were a tap dancer in the early part of the 20th century, and you wanted to test your skills. The common stories that have been passed down to me claims that Broad and South Streets was the corner you wanted to get to, because that's where the toughest challenges played themselves out.  You can watch this video of Philadelphia tap master, LaVaughn Robinson, to get a sense of how the street hoofin' tradition came to be.

Street hoofin' is a technique, and it comes directly from the sounds and phrases created and passed on from nameless dancers, to people we don’t speak enough about, like Jerry Tapps, Mellow King, Henry Meadows, and more, to the one name we all know, LaVaughn Robinson, and then to younger proteges like Robert F. Burden, Jr. It requires a low-to-the-ground, dynamically powerful approach. The steps are quick, complex and polyrhythmic.

But again, the steps are just tools. In order to pass this kind of "challenging" tradition on throughout time, it's more about passing on the kind of practicing and sharpening and crafting of your own particular sound. So that, if you were to hit a corner, people would be able to hear you, before they even saw you.

And how do you do that? You have to get in the center of the circle, take the gloves off, and throw out your best pocket step.