In Colonial America, dance moves with African origins became intertwined with the rapid footwork of the Irish jig and the percussion of English clog dancing. Whether cultures intermingled in the rural South or in crowded city neighborhoods, the result was a budding new set of hybrid dance forms based on a skilled and ever-changing combination of movement and sound.

From its roots in popular entertainment, tap has grown into a significant art form praised as a major American contribution to world dance. As it continues to evolve through influences from jazz and hip hop, this dynamic form of dance will be equally at home in the most prestigious performance halls and on the streets, building on tradition while staying fresh with the infusion of new cultural influences.

Historians trace the deep roots of tap dancing to the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, especially to contact between enslaved Africans and Irish and Scottish indentured servants on Caribbean plantations in the 1600s. In Colonial America, a wide range of dance elements with African origins — including a relaxed torso, hip movement, improvisation, using the body as a percussive instrument, and the rhythmic shuffling, gliding or dragging of the feet — became intertwined with the rapid footwork of the Irish jig and the percussion of English clog dancing.

Whether cultures intermingled in the rural South or in crowded city neighborhoods, the result was a budding new set of hybrid dance forms based on a skilled and ever-changing combination of movement and sound.

By the 1920s, tap as we know it had fully emerged and was popular on the Broadway stage. During the 1930s and 1940s, movies tended to highlight white dancers who tapped in a choreographed style that showed the influence of dance schools, while African American dancers were more likely to be seen performing off-screen in a more improvisational style with jazz-influenced rhythms. By the 1950s, interest in tap dancing was waning, but by the 1970s, aspiring tap dancers looked to their elders and learned from their skills and experience.

As young dancers from wide-ranging backgrounds began to study tap again, new generations of professionals infused tap with influences from jazz and hip hop to express their own personalities and experiences. From its roots in popular entertainment, tap has grown into a significant art form praised as a major American contribution to world dance. 

As it continues to evolve, tap will be equally at home in the most prestigious performance halls and on the streets, building on tradition while staying fresh with the infusion of new cultural influences.

Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards, tap dancer, choreographer, teacher who is regarded as the mastress of her generation, "had the rhythm in her" when at the age of three, she remembered watching her teenage sister dance and "being all in the way, getting right behind her and doing her steps." Her mother wondered what would happen if she put her in a dance class and so enrolled her in Paul and Arlene Kennedy's dancing school in Los Angeles. There, her extremely shy and unsmiling little girl picked up every step-- and repeated it exactly as shown. In the summer of 1984, the year the summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles, the eight-year-old Sumbry and Cyd Glover were the two girls chosen to perform at the Tip Tap Festival in Rome, Italy; it was there that the eight-year-old Sumbry, tap dancing thousands of miles from home before an enraptured audience, realized her future as a tap dancer. While she made a brief appearance in the film Tap! (1989),starring Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr., as one of the young dancers in the studio taking a class with Savion Glover, her first big break came in 1989 when at the age of twelve, she made her Broadway debut in Black and Blue, representing The Young Generation with Cyd Glover and Savion Glover. Wearing low-heeled shoes, all three performed a stair dance; as a member of the chorus, she also performed Henry LeTang's rhythmically complex tap routines in two-and-a-half-inch heels. In the 1990s, after graduating from high school, Sumbry became a soloist with Lynn Dally's Los Angeles-based Jazz Tap Ensemble, making appearances in New York, Ohio, Hong Kong, and Alaska. She made visually engaging designs in such works as All Blues and Oracle, a quintet in which she and Derick Grant skated effortlessly across the stage with crossed-arms, turning under each other's arms, dancing as one and in counterpoint to each other.

In 1999, Sumbry joined the cast of the Tony Award-winning Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk as the first female performer in the show. As Melba Huber wrote, "Because she could dance like a guy, nothing had to be changed and both Savion [Glover] and Derick[Grant] believed she could do it. But it is believed that she was cast as the first female in Noise/Funk in spite of being a girl, not because of it. She earned it, every step of it." Iris Fanger writing about the performance of Noise/Funk in the Boston Globe wrote: "Although Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards is an engaging addition to the line-up, Glover's unisex choreography makes no room for a statement on gender." It was during this period that Sumbry began hearing comments about her dancing like a man: "First they would just kinda say, ‘Wow, you were really keeping up with those guys.' And I'm like, ‘Is that what you want to say to me Really' I'm the only girl up there and that's what you want to say"

Sumbry was thus motivated to explore new techniques of rhythm-tap for women. In 2006, Edwards announced a new course in her Harlem Tap Studio: "Mastering Femininity in Tap," or MFIT, a four-week tap class that promised to "Develop your elegance and style…develop your ability to dance effectively in heels." Countering the downward-driving, piston-driven attack of traditional (male) rhythm-tapping styles with steps that were structured along more circuitous paths of attack—steps in ronde de jambs shapes; pullbacks that used the momentum of a traditional straight-back pullback but that were circular and aerial; preparations for shuffles made by twisting and spiraling the torso-- Sumbry's technique of hoofing in heels that was female-centered. MFIT may have been named for "mastering" femininity in tap, but the class was really about regaining it-- through a revolutionary new approach to technique, and by embracing it all.

Sumbry's joining of the cast of Noise/Funk reunited her with Omar Edwards, a Noise/Funk dancer who had first been acquainted with Sumbry in 1989 when she was performing in Black and Blue. They were married in 1998, during the closing weeks of Noise/Funk, subsequently birthing three children. Though the couple rarely performs together, they both consider themselves rhythm tap dancers, with the form emphasizing sound over visual style. Omar has great respect for his wife. As Karen Hildebrand reported in Dance Magazine: "According to Edwards, his wife's skills are more highly developed than his: ‘Im proud to say I don't dance with Dormeshia. I think I would hold her back.' He calls her a psychotic technician. ‘Savion [Glover] will choreograph something that's pretty hard for your brain, and she'll suck it up like it's nothing. My wife is a dancer to the soul.'"

In 1999 Sumbry Edwards and Ayodele Casel performed a tap dance number in the "You Musn't Kick It Around" number from Pal Joey in the television documentary The Rodgers and Hart Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty. In 2000, she performed the role of Pickaninny Tospy in the Spike Lee film Bamboozled, starring Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson, in which she was assistant choreographer to Savion Glover. In 2001, Sumbry Edwards appeared in the Michael Jackson music video, "Rock Your World," after which time she became a regular performer in his music television videos, while she was also pursuing a career on the stage. Writing about her performance in the Friday evening "Tap New York" program of Tap City 2004 performance at the Duke Theater, Eva Yaa Asantewaa wrote "Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, deceptively petite but forceful, showed that she is a true jazz musician of the feet."

In a 2005 performance of "Turned On Tap" at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Simonetta Dixon precisely summed up the talents of Sumbry Edwards: "The two real stars of the evening were the Americans Jason Samuels Smith and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, who both blew the audience away with their style, their technique, their raw energy . . . Sumbry-Edwards managed to have the upper body elegance of Ginger Rogers and the gutsy tapping feet of a contemporary rhythm dancers. She was a joy to watch, and when she and Samuels Smith did their duet, in perfect time, it brought the house down."

Sumbry-Edwards continues to be one of the most in-demand dancers, teachers, and choreographers of her generation On film, she performed the role of Pickaninny Tospy in the Spike Lee film Bamboozled (2000) starring Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson, and in which she was assistant choreographer to Savion Glover; and she starred as a tap dancer on a journey of rediscovery in the Stacie Hawkins independent film The Rise and Fall of Miss Thang (2007). On stage, she was Jason Samuels Smith's muse in his jazz tap tribute to Charlie "The Bird" Parker in Charlie's Angels (2006). And she starred in Derick Grant's mega-tap musical Imagine Tap! (2006) at the Harris Theater in Chicago.

In May 2011 Sumbry-Edwards was the cover feature in Dance Magazine, where she was praised for both her abilities and her influence on other tappers, like Michael Jackson. Tap dancer Michelle Dorrance is not alone when praising Sumbry-Edwards as being the best female tap dancer alive: "Her movement, technical ability, and her sound in heels set her apart. "

In 2012, Edwards received a BESSIE Award for Outstanding Performance, in part acknowledging her stellar performance as a featured dancer in the 2011 Broadway musical After Midnight; that same musical awarded her with the Fred and Adele Astaire Award for superb performance.