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Still Tapping after All These Years: Age and Respect in Tap Dance

  • Chapter
Staging Age

Abstract

An elegant, silver-haired gentleman in a white suit taps his feet sharply against the floor in syncopated patterns, swinging his arms front to back. His right leg bends and snaps quickly—front, back, front, across his left ankle. One moment, he’s a skater gliding across the stage; the next, he’s a jokester, dragging one leg behind him in an irregular limp. He pitches backward with an exuberant front hitch-kick, jumps lightly into a wide stride facing front, slides his seemingly frictionless feet together, and finishes it off with a two-footed double spin. The man is Jimmy Slyde, age seventy, performing at a tap festival in Rio de Janeiro in 1998.

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Authors
  1. Wendy Oliver
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Editor information

Valerie Barnes Lipscomb Leni Marshall

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© 2010 Valerie Barnes Lipscomb and Leni Marshall

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Oliver, W. (2010). Still Tapping after All These Years: Age and Respect in Tap Dance. In: Lipscomb, V.B., Marshall, L. (eds) Staging Age. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230110052_11

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