Leonard Reed's Shim Sham Shimmy - Tap Level: Beginner+

  Leonard Reed's Shim Sham Shimmy Tap Level: Beginner and upIncluding:The Original Shim Sham (1927)The Freeze Chorus (circa 1930)The Shim Sham II (1994)   In 1927, two song and dance men, Leonard Reed and Willie Bryant, took four popular steps of the 1920's, strung them together with a break and created the now legendary "Shim Sham Shimmy." At the time, Reed & Bryant were touring in the South with The Whitman Sisters show, and the dance was originally called "Gofus." The dance was designed to be so easy that members of the audience could be taught one step a night (getting them to come back to see the show three more times to learn the rest of it!). The dance travelled quickly up north and was renamed in the 1930s when it was performed in New York's Shim Sham Club and the chorus girls added the shimmying of the shoulders on the opening step. The second chorus, "The Freeze," is the same as the first, but dancers freeze in place of the break step. In February of 1994, at age 87, Leo