Not every tap move lands the same. Some are technically gorgeous but the crowd barely notices. Others? The whole room goes quiet, then explodes.
I remember watching a senior showcase where someone dropped a Buffalo mid-routine and you could literally hear the room inhale — that split second before the applause hit like a wave. That's the kind of move we're talking about. The ones that shift the energy in the room from polite watching to genuine shock.
The Shim Sham carries that kind of weight. It started in the jazz clubs of 1930s Harlem, and tap dancers have been passing it down like a secret handshake ever since. When the whole class hits it together at a jam, something happens — the rhythm locks in, and suddenly you're not just dancing, you're part of a lineage. Savion Glover learned it this way. Broadway cats learned it this way. Now it's your turn. The beauty is in the unison: when your heels and toes hit together just right, the whole floor sounds like one instrument. Get that feeling once and you'll chase it forever.
Then there's the Time Step — the move that separates the dancers who understand rhythm from the ones who are just counting steps. It sounds simple: a pattern of taps in a fixed sequence. But once you speed it up and start syncopating it against the beat, it becomes something else entirely. The thing about the Time Step is that every tap dancer has their own version. You take the basic structure and make it yours — maybe you drag a heel here, add a shuffle there. When you watch Savion do it versus someone like Jason Samuel Young, they look like completely different moves. That's the point. It's your fingerprint on a universal groove.
The Flap doesn't hit you over the head. That's not its job. It's the move you use when you want to float — that moment in a routine where everything slows down just slightly and you glide between phrases like you're skating on ice. A clean Flap sounds almost liquid. It comes from jazz tap, from the days when dancers had to fill space smoothly because orchestras were small and the music wasn't always loud enough. Now it's become shorthand for elegance. You'll see it in every Broadway tap number, usually right before something explosive. The Flap is the breath before the shout.
When you want to actually stop the show, though, you bring out the Buffalo. This is the move that makes tap veterans lean forward in their seats. It originated with dancers like Lon Chaney (no relation to the actor) who could cook at tempos that made other dancers dizzy. The pattern is deceptively simple — alternating steps in a rapid-fire sequence — but try doing it at performance speed without your breath catching. The first time I landed a clean Buffalo at tempo, my instructor actually clapped. That almost never happens. When you pull it off, the audience feels the precision — they're watching someone do something genuinely difficult and make it look effortless. That's the magic of tap.
The Pulled-Up is pure power. Where the Flap floats, the Pulled-Up slams. It comes from the heel, driving down into the floor, and it needs that explosive quality — like you're pulling yourself up from the ground with every hit. Dancers use it to punctuate, to create that moment of silence right before a resolution. There's a clip of Ted Posen doing a Pulled-Up so hard his shoe flew off mid-routine. He kept dancing. The crowd went insane. That's the energy this move brings: intensity that doesn't apologize for itself.
Here's the truth nobody tells you starting out: technique is only half of it. The other half is knowing when to use what. A perfect Time Step in the wrong place kills momentum. A single, well-timed Pulled-Up after a soft section? The audience will lose their minds. Watch experienced tap dancers and notice how they build a routine — the contrast, the breath, the moments of rest that make the explosions mean something. That's the craft. That's what turns a sequence of steps into a story that makes people want to stand up and clap before you even finish.
