Feel the Floor

"A rich and lovely book. It brings forward Buddy Bradley with forthright care, wondering with thinkers and artists from Black history how we might best remember his work and understand his achievements."—Thomas F. DeFrantz, author of Dancing Many Drums The groundbreaking story of Buddy Bradley—the most influential dancer and choreographer you've never heard of This sweeping biography brings to life the extraordinary Black dancer and choreographer whose work was key to the jazz age transformation of how we move to music—in nightclubs, on stage, and in film. Like the many other talented Black jazz and tap dancers who created America’s vernacular dance forms, Bradley’s career began as a dancer during the Harlem Renaissance. But Bradley soon began to teach jazz and tap dance to up-and-coming white entertainers and then to choreograph—an unheard-of role in Jim Crow America, and one for which he received no credit. Moving to England in 1930, where his work would be credited and lauded, Bradley revolutionized dance with jazz movement in the West End, Paris, and the British film industry, working on scores of famous productions over three decades. Feel the Floor exposes how Bradley's revolutionary moves electrified Broadway in the 1920s, conquered London's West End in the 1930s, introduced unsuspected nuance to tap dance, and, even, permeated classical dance. His students became legends: Eleanor Powell, Ruby Keeler, Adele Astaire, Clifton Webb. His innovations live on in Balanchine ballets and Jerome Robbins masterpieces as well as the Broadway choreography of Agnes de Mille, Bob Fosse, and Susan Stroman. Maureen Footer spent five years in prodigious research, crossed three continents, and enlisted private investigators to uncover Bradley's buried legacy. She tracked ancestral history in the Deep South, discovered lost films, corrected false narratives, and revealed how one man's genius rewrote the DNA of American dance. Buddy Bradley's story mirrors today's fight for recognition of Black contributions to American culture. His work in rhythm tap and jazz dance, and cross-pollination with classical ballet choreographers like Frederick Ashton and Georges Balanchine, vocabulary didn't just influence dance—they created the movement language we still speak today. For anyone passionate about Broadway's golden age, the Harlem Renaissance, cosmopolitan London between the wars, American vernacular dance, African American history, and untold stories of artistic brilliance, Feel the Floor delivers a stunning resurrection of one of dance history's most dynamic innovators.