Black and Blue: The women who reclaimed tap

Abstract

When Black and Blue opened on Broadway in 1989, it brought together some of the greatest names in tap dance: Henry LeTang, Cholly Atkins, Fayard Nicholas, Jimmy Slyde, and Savion Glover: men who had defined the art form and would continue to do so. But there were also nearly a dozen women, including Deborah Mitchell, Dianne Walker, and Germaine Goodson. “Chorus girls” have long been the unsung heroes of tap and published histories typically obscure the contributions of Black women to the art form. Furthermore, professional networks that advocate for Black concert dance have largely ignored tap, due in part to theories of racial uplift, respectability politics, and the historical associations between tap and blackface minstrelsy. In this article, I argue that the careers of Mitchell, Walker, and Goodson offer an alternative. Analysis of their performances in Black and Blue reveals how they used their dancing bodies to reclaim tap as a source of pride, while simultaneously reasserting the role of women within the form for future generations.