ute 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.

You are no doubt familiar in a general way with the Musical Comedy
type of dancing, which is really an exaggerated form of fancy dancing.
It includes the now popular but simpler "soft-shoe" dances, dainty,
soft, pretty movements with many effective attitudes of the body, all
sorts of "kicking" and "fancy" steps. As a matter of fact, this type
of dancing is perhaps the most difficult of all to define exactly,
because often musical comedy dances include a few tap steps and
sometimes simple ballet movements, or combinations, as we term them.
Our musical comedy dances are arranged in routines, or sequences of
not less than ten steps, including an entrance, eight ste