A film project connecting our tap dancers, collaborators and community in Liverpool, Oxford, London, Barcelona and beyond during lockdown.
The Shim Sham is regarded as Tap dance’s national anthem, passed on and shared through generations. It is also performed by the Swing dance and Lindy hop communities.
Our Community Shim Sham
First made: 2020
| Performers: | Our company, students, collaborators |
| Editing: | Emily O'Shea |
The choreography is credited to Leonard Reed and Willie Bryant, and it consists of ‘standard’ steps of the era of the 1920’s, it was originally named ‘Goofus” but renamed after the Shim Sham club in Harlem. In the late 1920s, when Leonard Reed and Willie Bryant were performing with the Whitman Sisters troupe, they danced what they called “Goofus” to the tune Turkey in the Straw. The routine consisted of standard steps: eight bars each of the Double Shuffle, the Cross Over, Tack Annie (an up-and-back shuffle), and Falling Off a Log.
At the end of many performances, all of the musicians, singers, and dancers would get together on stage and do one last routine: the Shim Sham Shimmy. Tap dancers would perform technical variations. The Shim Sham goes best with swing songs whose melody lines start on beat eight, as does the choreography.