Style of American theatrical dance using precise rhythmical patterns of foot movement and audible foot tapping.

The sources of tap dancing include the Irish solo step dance, the English clog dance and African dance movements. Among the slaves in the southern United States, these merged by the early 19th century into folk styles, the modern descendants of which include buck-and-wing dancing and southern United States clogging (both done in leather-sole shoes).

By the 1920s metal plates, or taps, had been added to leather-soled shoes. In the 1920s and 1930s black dancers contributed to the development of new styles of tap dance and black dance teams became popular for their acrobatic, often satirical acts. The style was further expanded in the 1930s and 1940s, when dancers such as Fred Astaire, Paul Draper, Ray Bolger and in the late 1950s, Gene Kelly added movements from ballet and modern dance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s interest in tap dance underwent a big resurgence.
Tap has many forms of background music. The most popular to perform to are Jazz and Big Band music.