Superhobo
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This must be my seventh attempt to get some sort of tap-dancing thread going - I know I can't be the only one on the board.
Tap-dancing is an encompassing term, but within it, there are two (although some would say even three or four, but I stick with two) distinctions based on both your style and your skill. Savion Glover kind of sums it up nicely in this video, about two minutes and twenty seconds in.
A tap dancer is someone who is rehearsed, someone who, in a show or something like that, will spend days or even weeks rehearsing some simple number, often-times wearing top hats and a strong focus on posture and gesture. A hoofer isn't - a hoofer is almost the exact opposite.
I bring up "Happy Feet" a lot, because it's one of my favorite films, the least reason of which is the hoofing inherent, but it's a great example of hoofing in modern film - if anyone's seen any of the motion capture sessions with Savion Glover. What was done there was they created an entirely new style of tap, which I guess you'd call 'penguin hoofing -'
- I've stolen quite a couple of steps from that clip. But, what's really interesting is the 'penguin school' mention, which they used to create something that was both recognizably hoofing, but also distinctly naturalistic and penguin-like, something that doesn't break the reality set in by the film.
But, a good example of where the real hoofing scene is right now can be observed, besides Savion Glover and others like Jason Samuels Smith (who, I think, are this generation's Slyde and Teddy Hale, it would be apt to say), by looking at these two -
- right now and for the last two or three decades, there's been a massive resurgence going on, and more and more, we're returning to how it was in the thirties and forties, with street dancers of massive talent almost everywhere, now. And, this is a good thing, I think.
Tap-dancing is an encompassing term, but within it, there are two (although some would say even three or four, but I stick with two) distinctions based on both your style and your skill. Savion Glover kind of sums it up nicely in this video, about two minutes and twenty seconds in.
A tap dancer is someone who is rehearsed, someone who, in a show or something like that, will spend days or even weeks rehearsing some simple number, often-times wearing top hats and a strong focus on posture and gesture. A hoofer isn't - a hoofer is almost the exact opposite.
I bring up "Happy Feet" a lot, because it's one of my favorite films, the least reason of which is the hoofing inherent, but it's a great example of hoofing in modern film - if anyone's seen any of the motion capture sessions with Savion Glover. What was done there was they created an entirely new style of tap, which I guess you'd call 'penguin hoofing -'
- I've stolen quite a couple of steps from that clip. But, what's really interesting is the 'penguin school' mention, which they used to create something that was both recognizably hoofing, but also distinctly naturalistic and penguin-like, something that doesn't break the reality set in by the film.
But, a good example of where the real hoofing scene is right now can be observed, besides Savion Glover and others like Jason Samuels Smith (who, I think, are this generation's Slyde and Teddy Hale, it would be apt to say), by looking at these two -
- right now and for the last two or three decades, there's been a massive resurgence going on, and more and more, we're returning to how it was in the thirties and forties, with street dancers of massive talent almost everywhere, now. And, this is a good thing, I think.
