Baby Laurence: Black History Month in Dance, 2021

On finishing Brian Seibert’s “What the Eye Hears - a History of Tap Dancing”, the single tap dancer I most longed (and long) to have seen was and is Baby Laurence (1920-1974), my nominee for Black History Month in Dance 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126. Everyone knows about the Nicholas Brothers, his contemporaries: they made it to Hollywood. It’s all too easy not to have heard of him today (I hadn’t until reading “What the Eye Hears”), but there’s (just) enough evidence to propose he may have been at least as great as any other tap dancer in history.

Laurence was a handsome man who made a visual impression, but he concentrated on tap as sound.

And so our best document of his dancing is an LP he made, “Dancemaster”, recorded in 1959-1960. Seibert: “Even at that late date, the concept was unprecedented: an album dancer as the lead instrument. Laurence does not sing. He astonishes. The first thing that strikes the ear is extraordinary speed, the sheer number of distinct taps. But this isn’t Ann Miller rattling away for a world record. The sound is fine-grained, molded, more like the work of fingers than of feet. Thumping bass notes anchor it to a deep bottom. As with Charlie Parker, what’s most remarkable isn’t the rapidity but the imagination persistently meeting impossible demands of tempo. The album is an exhibition of range. Laurence does a sand dance, a military number, a ‘modern’ version of a Bill Robinson stair routine, using the hollow book to drop bombs on himself.”

This is great writing; when you listen to Laurence’s “Dancemaster” album, you hear that Seibert’s writing is a response to superlative dancing. You can find film of the older Baby Laurence, but “Dancemaster” is the best-ever proof that tap dancing is for the ears, and sublime.

Sunday 21 February