Jitterbug! champions American dance and encourages choreographers to reach beyond the dancical's 1931 setting into the future for dance steps not even the jaded Savoy Ballroom regulars back then could have dreamed up to win the climatic dance contest. That includes everything from dub step and hip hop to hiplet. To that end it isn't implausible for the dancical's heroes, Tharbis Jefferson and Billy Rhythm, professional dancers at the Cotton Club, to team up and win the contest by throwing in tap and ballet steps at the Jitterbug break. Or at the same time in a toe-tap sequence that blows everyone away. The fact that a toe-tap shoe was available at that time makes it all the more conceivable. Here's a look at the shoes in action in 1934's The Gem of the Ocean. The dancers are Dick and Edith Barstow. I'm sure Bojangles upon seeing it must have thought, WTF? It's so far over-the-top you gotta wonder why this routine isn't as well-known as Bojangles and Shirley Temple's staircase dance from 1935's The Little Colonel.
To learn more about toe-tap, click the following to download a thesis written by Sarah Helen Williams for her Masters in Dance from the University of New Mexico called "Noisy Feet: The Forgotten Click of American Toe-Tap, 1925-1935."
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