What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing

The first authoritative history of tap dancing, one of the great art forms—along with jazz and musical comedy—created in America

What the Eye Hears offers an authoritative account of the great American art of tap dancing. Brian Seibert, a dance critic for The New York Times, begins by exploring tap's origins as a hybrid of the jig and clog dancing and dances brought from Africa by slaves. He tracks tap's transfer to the stage through blackface minstrelsy and …