Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was an American tap dancer and actor of stage and film. He was the most famous of all African American tap dancers in the twentieth century. According to the American Tap Dance Foundation, Robinson's style of dancing upright and swinging, his light and exacting footwork brought tap “up on its toes” from an earlier flat-footed shuffling style, and developed the art of tap dancing to a delicate perfection. His soft-shoe and tap routines were widely copied by other dancers, but he was unmatched for ingenuity in creating new steps, especially his famous "stair dance." He also was famed for a unique ability to run backward. Robinson featured in the musical Stormy Weather (1943) along with Lena Horne, Cab Calloway and Katherine Dunham and her dance troupe.
