"When you dance to your own rhythm, life taps its toes to your beat." - Terri Guillemets
In 1989,
George H.W. Bush declared May 25 National Tap Dance Day. This particular
day was chosen to honor Bill “Bojangles” Robinson since it was his birthday,
and he was influential in advancing this dance form.
In the United States, nationwide
celebrations take place on May 25, celebrating tap dance. Like all forms of
dance, tap dance is beneficial on many levels. It improves cardio-respiratory
fitness levels, creates and reinforces neural pathways so that messages are
carried efficiently and quickly between the muscles and the brain, and it
increases muscular strength and flexibility.
Additionally,
tap provides other specific benefits. Tap requires dancers to shift their
weight continuously from one foot to the other, improving balance and
reactionary skills. The fact that tap is a high impact, weight-bearing dance
form also means that it puts additional stress on bones, which encourages bone
growth and helps provide insurance against osteoporosis.
Moreover,
since tap is rhythmic in nature, it stimulates parts of the brain also
stimulated by music. Studies have shown that rhythm stimulates an area of the
frontal brain lobe called the inferior frontal gyrus. This area of the brain is
called upon each time a tap dancer needs to learn or reproduce a rhythmic
phrase and becomes very well-developed. The inferior frontal gyrus is the same
area of the brain that is called upon when a person needs to understand spoken
language. Those who are exposed to rhythm often have been found to have better
phonological awareness. This awareness
is the ability to divide words into syllables and detect different sounds at
the beginning, middle, and end of words.
So on May
25, we celebrate National Tap Dance Day and remember once again how dance can
make a difference. In addition to being
fun to do and exciting to watch, tap dance helps develop different areas of the
brain, can increase literacy levels, and makes us healthier individuals.
