Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after clippety-clip of the best and brightest stars rattling out impossible rhythms: Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling; Fayard and Harold Nicholas taking the stairs one split jump at a time; Gene Kelly singing (and dancing) in the rain.
The American actor, writer and entertainer Clarke Peters (anything from The Wire to Five Guys Named Moe) was never dragged to tap-dancing classes as a boy in the late 1950s — ‘it was more ballet and jazz by then’ — but he remembers ‘trying to pick up moves from the films. I think I do what I do because of Gene Kelly. He wasn’t a great tap dancer but I loved his athleticism, his style.’
Peters is modest about his own powers — ‘I’m the best tapper in the world in my kitchen’ — but his background in musicals and revue and his affection for the dancers of old made him a logical choice to present BBC4’s Tap America, one of a sudden rash of dance programmes crowding the May schedule.
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