Tap Roots with Andrew Nemr (4-Part Series)

Description

Tap Roots is the opportunity to enhance your knowledge, and to bring tap history into your classroom. In these times, especially, we have the chance to enhance the mind, body and soul of our students.

Bring short segments of tap history into each class or offer a more intensive option. Either way you will have the tools and knowledge to make your tap education the best that it can be!

The Early Years!

Tap Roots Lesson 1

The early years of a craft as old as tap dancing, may be difficult to unearth. In this lesson we will dig deep to explore the stories, places, and events that affected the birthing of tap dance as we know it today. Discover key contributors like Master Juba, John Diamond, Thomas Rice, and King Rastus Brown while using frameworks to help us navigate the many narratives.

The Heyday

Tap Roots Lesson 2

The Heyday is the period of tap dancing that we tend to reminisce about most often. It lingers in the communal imagination. In this lesson we will aim to put key stories, places, events, and the multitude of contributors in the context of their time, and the larger arc of tap dance as we practice it today. We’ll see how pervasive tap dance was in American popular culture and begin to brace ourselves for The Shift.

The Shift

Tap Roots Lesson 3

The Shift is when tap dance was said to have died, but it didn’t. In this lesson we will explore the things that may have caused the shift and where and how tap dance survived during this period. We will highlight contributors including: Arthur Duncan, Peg Leg Bates, and others, who were key in maintaining the small public presence of tap dance during this time.

The Return

Tap Roots Lesson 4

The Return brings us to the present day, but how did we get here? The past 50 years is full of a multitude of stories, places, and events that served to bring tap dance back into a more public light. In this lesson we will highlight some of the many factors that re-popularized tap dance, the places where it thrived (and continues to), and the many events that helped promote the craft and continue to cultivate interest. Key contributors from the 1970s through today will be explored.