Tap dance is a form of making music with your feet or your tap shoes.  Sometimes tap is used without music and the music is what you make with your feet.  Tap is a fun and fast pace type of dance.

The early slave trade in America resulted in a rhythmic collision of cultures and ended up as tap dance.  The slaves would use there tap dancing in code and that's how they communicated without letting their master know what they were saying.  By the mid-nineteenth century, African Americans had combined their footwork with Irish and British clogging steps and that created the modern tap dance.

The name tap comes from the tapping sound made when the small metal plates on the dancer's shoes touch a hard floor.  This lively, rhythmic tapping makes the performer not just a dance, but also a percussive musician.

Tap flourished in the U.S. from 1900 to 1955, when it was the main performance dance of Vaudeville and Broadway.  Vaudeville was the inexpensive entertainment before television, and it employed droves of skilled tap dancers.  Many big bands included tap dances as part of their show.

Tap dancers make frequent use of syncopation.  choreographies typically start on the eighth beat, or the eighth and the first count.  Another aspect of tap dancing is improvisation.  This can either be done with music and follow the beats provided a more ballroom look to tap dancing.

There are many famous guy tap dancers like Fred Astaire, John Bubbles, Charles "Honi" Coles, Steve Condos, Sammy Davis Jr., Savion Glover, Harold Nicholas, Bill Robinson, Jimmy Slyde, and Tommy Tune thats just to name a few.

The simplest step is the toe tap, using the ball of your foot to make a sound.  the same sound can come from the heel, although often it is not as loud or pronounced.  These steps can be combined to make a cramp roll which produces a rolling sound like a horse gallop.  There are many more tap steps and more are being made up everyday.