The History of Tap Dance | The Express Way with Dulé Hill

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Dulé Hill has been tap dancing since the age of three, and launched his career shortly after when he was cast in the national tour of the Broadway show, The Tap Dance Kid. Dulé explores his love of tap, and the history of this American dance form.

Tap historian Chester Whitmore explains, “Tap is an American form of dance, but the rhythms come from the West African djembe drum.” Djembe dance and drumming traces its roots back to the 12th century Mandinka people and was later brought to America by enslaved West Africans. But when early slaveholders banned the traditional drums, enslaved people found other ways to preserve their rhythms, using rocks, sticks, bottles and their feet.

While enslaved Africans defiantly held onto and preserved their drum patterns and syncopated rhythms, European immigrants also arrived in the American colonies, bringing Irish, Scottish and Dutch folk dancing with them. This blend gave birth to the American tap dance.

By the 1840s, tap evolved from a tool of communication to a controversial American comedy act known as minstrelsy, in which mostly white performers would paint their skin black to imitate African-American dancers. Since then, tap has seen over a century's worth of transformations, each bringing its own unique style, like that of Bill Bojangles Robinson and his famous stair dance in the vaudeville era, the trailblazing Nicholas Brothers who fused jazz, ballet and acrobatics during the Harlem Renaissance, and silver screen giants like Gene Kelly, who brought tap to forties and fifties-era Hollywood.

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The Express Way with Dulé Hill
Multi-talented actor and performer Dulé Hill (“The Wonder Years,” “The West Wing”) and director Danny Lee (“Who Is Stan Smith?”) take audiences on an emotional and celebratory road trip across the nation to explore the transformative power of the arts. Along his journey, Hill travels to California, the Appalachian region, Texas and Chicago to connect with local visionaries, activists, changemakers and pioneers who are using their artistic passions to foster connection, deepen empathy, and create meaningful change within their communities.