The Apotheosis of Tap

 This morning, I was reading about the dancer and actress Eleanor Powell, 'best remembered', as Wikipedia succinctly puts it, 'for her tap dance numbers in musical films of the 1930s and 1940s'. She was a cripplingly shy child, whose mother sent her to ballet classes to overcome this tendency – a move that paid off beyond all expectation. She was performing professionally with her acrobatic dance routines before she was even in her teens, then moved to New York with her mother at the age of 15 and started to learn tap  – which didn't come naturally, as her ballet training had taught her to pull away from the floor, rather than 'play' it with her feet. Her teacher countered this by tying around her waist an army surplus belt with a sandbag at either side. Suddenly she 'found the floor' – and the rest was history.
Eleanor initially resisted Hollywood, trying to discourage MGM by making ludicrous salary demands – but they, surprisingly, agreed to them, and bagged themselves one of their brightest stars. Even Fred Astaire seems to have been somewhat in awe of Powell, who had a reputation as the only woman who could outdance him, at least in tap. In Broadway Melody of 1940, the two of them performed a routine to Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine' that is surely the apotheosis of tap. Enjoy...