Hoofin’ it!
I woke up on Sunday morning to the sounds of Liane Hansen and Jane Goldberg tap dancing on NPR’s Weekend Edition. I’ve been thinking about tap ever since. I loved tap dance as a child (inspired, as many young girls in the 80s’, by the movie Annie), but I didn’t actually take lessons until college. I even took lessons for a while in St. Petersburg from the city’s tap icon, Mikhail Mikhailovich–a a very tall, very thin man with a mustache that always wore a suit and a fedora. He taught me the waltz along with the shuffle step.
In honor of tapping, I wanted to post one of the greatest tap routines ever from the 1943 film Stormy Weather that featured performances by jazz greats, Lena Horne, Fats Waller, and Cab Calloway. This is the Nicholas Brothers dancing to the Jumping Jive by Cab Calloway.
-Jen Davis
