Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance
by Marshall Stearns, Jean Stearns
Category: Music

Many of the dancers died before the first publication of this book; neither they nor Marshall Stearns lived to see the revival and the renaissance of tap dance. This is truly sad, for Marshall would have seen his book become the Bible for the new generation of tap dancers and a reference manual for the tap masters still living who worked so diligently to pass on the tradition as well as the technique. This book gave those dancers a reference point from which to observe both their contributions to, and the history of, their form. They incorporated this history with a new self-consciousness and respect for both tap dance as an art form and the tap dancer as an artist. -- Foreword.