Feel the Floor: Restoring the Life and Legacy of Jazz Choreographer Buddy Bradley

A stunning resurrection of the visionary choreographer Buddy Bradley whose contributions to rhythm tap and jazz dance in the 1920s and '30s indelibly transformed the way we move to music

In Feel the Floor, Maureen Footer shows how Bradley's revolutionary moves electrified Broadway in the 1920s and conquered London's West End in the 1930s, introducing new inflections to the era's tap and jazz dance.

His experiments in rhythm and staging would anticipate bebop, and his influence even permeated classical dance, cross-pollinating with ballet choreographers like Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine.

Mirroring today's fight for recognition of Black contributors to transatlantic culture, Buddy Bradley's story isn't just one of influence. He created the movement language we still speak today.

The white performers Bradley taught to move became legends: Eleanor Powell, Ruby Keeler, Adele Astaire, Jessie Matthews. Bradley was also the first to fuse movement, character, and narrative in the theater, setting the stage for the integrated book musical and the careers of Agnes de Mille, Bob Fosse, and Jerome Robbins.

In post-war Great Britain, as Black American dancers and jazz musicians flocked to London (and a congenial base at Bradley's dance school), he danced and choreographed with Baby Laurence, Pete Nugent, Frankie Manning, and Mabel Lee, among others.

Footer spent five years in prodigious research, crossing two continents, tracking ancestral history in the Deep South, and enlisting private investigators to uncover Bradley's buried legacy.

Feel the Floor corrects the false narratives that have erased Bradley's influence, revealing how one man's genius transformed musical theater, shaped modern ballet, and rewired the very DNA of American dance.

Author: Maureen Footer
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 05/12/2026
Pages: 360
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.42lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.26w x 1.26d
ISBN: 9780807045244


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 03/01/2026 pg. 107

About the Author
Maureen Footer is author of George Stacey and the Creation of American Chic and Dior and His Decorators: Victor Grandpierre, Georges Geffroy, and the New Look. Her books have been reviewed in The Financial Times, Forbes, the Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair, among others. Ms. Footer sits on the boards of the New York City Ballet and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library, the preeminent dance research institution in the world. She can be found today studying tap in dance studios and dancing to African drums in the East Village.