The first authoritative history of tap dancing, one of the great art
forms--along with jazz and musical comedy--created in America
*
What the Eye Hears* offers an authoritative account of the great
American art of tap dancing. Brian Seibert, a dance critic for The New
York Times, begins by exploring tap's origins as a hybrid of the jig
and clog dancing and dances brought from Africa by slaves. He tracks
tap's transfer to the stage through blackface minstrelsy and charts its
growth as a cousin to jazz in the vaudeville circuits. Seibert
chronicles tap's spread to ubiquity on Broadway and in Hollywood,
analyzes its decline after World War II, and celebrates its rediscovery
and reinvention by new generations of American and international
performers. In the process, we discover how the history of tap dancing
is central to any meaningful account of American popular culture.
This is a story with a huge cast of characters, from Master Juba through
Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and
Gene Kelly and Paul Draper to Gregory Hines and Savion Glover. Seibert
traces the stylistic development of tap through individual practitioners
and illuminates the cultural exchange between blacks and whites, the
interplay of imitation and theft, as well as the moving story of African
Americans in show business, wielding enormous influence as they grapple
with the pain and pride of a complicated legacy. What the Eye Hears
teaches us to see and hear the entire history of tap in its every step.
