What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing - Softcover

Seibert, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374536511 ISBN 13: 9780374536510

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Tap is America's great contribution to dance, and Brian Seibert's book gives us--at last!--a full-scale (and lively) history of its roots, its development, and its glorious achievements. An essential book!"
--Robert Gottlieb, dance critic for The New York Observer and editor of Reading Dance
 
"Brian Seibert's What the Eye Hears not only tells you all you wanted to know about tap dancing; it tells you what you never realized you needed to know. Drawing on his massive research, Seibert follows the art through its roots, its vaudeville heyday, its forays onto Broadway and into Hollywood, its decline, its renaissance, and its dissemination beyond American shores. And he recounts all this in an easygoing style, providing vibrant descriptions of the dancing itself and illuminating commentary by those masters who could make a floor sing."
--Deborah Jowitt, author of Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance and Time and the Dancing Image

About the Author:

Brian Seibert is a dance critic for The New York Times and a contributor to The New Yorker. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. What the Eye Hears is his first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0374536511
• ISBN 13: 9780374536510
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624