I HAVE already named the five basic types of stage dancing taught in my courses. In this chapter I shall describe them in detail in such a manner that anyone can distinguish them from one another.
No doubt when you have seen dances of the new type executed on the theatrical stage you may have been unable in some cases to correctly classify them. That is not at all surprising, since the classification is my own, as well as some of the steps themselves.
You have realized that so-and-so did a pleasing, pretty and complicated dance, but what it is called, or if it is called at all, you are unable to state. All my dances have names and are properly classified, and what these are and to what distinct type they belong is going to be spread before you here and now.
First let us consider the type that I have named American Specialty Dancing, the one that is more truly and distinctively American than any other type of dancing to be seen on any stage today.
This classification comprises every variety of tap and step dancing, and also what is commonly known as "Legmania," the latter including the high-kicking features, where the leg will execute front, back, and side kicks, and other forms of the acrobatic type of dancing. Legmania is not a possible development for every student of dancing, as nearly every other form of the art is, but is available to the few who are adapted to its exacting technique, which insures that this interesting field will never grow too many blossoms, and that supply is not likely to equal demand. I will mention Evelyn Law in "Legmania" and Ann Pennington in "Tap and Step" dancing as "sample" stars from my studios in this beautiful and lucrative type of dancing, though their dancing limitations are by no means confined to this one branch of the art.
Tap and step dances are made up of a series of steps that involve certain movements of the four parts of the foot as described in another chapter; namely, the toe, the ball of the foot, the heel, and the flat of the foot, which produce distinct rhythmic sounds or "taps" as they separately strike the floor or stage.
Under the classification of tap and step dancing, we teach the buck and wing dance, the waltz clog, the straight clog (which is like an English clog or a Lancashier clog), jigs, reels, and the old form of what we call step dancing, which was popular forty years ago in the old "variety" days. They did the jigs, reels and clogs then, and these different types of dancing modernized combine to make what we today call the American Specialty type of dancing. My course in tap dancing, for instance, includes beginners' "buck" and "soft-shoe" dances, intermediate, advanced, semi-professional and professional "buck" and "soft-shoe" dances. Of course, when you get into the semi-professional "buck" and "soft-shoe" you will begin to get complicated "taps," and you will get difficult triple-taps in professional "buck" dancing.