The Dancin' Demons

About Tap Dancing
Listen to the Dancin' Demons

For Henry Belcher and Nazeeh Hameed, who grew up trading tap dance and softshoe steps with other African-American kids on the streets of Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1930s, "fancy trash" is just another way of saying "treasure." Now in their seventies, Belcher and Hameed spent over twenty years of their lives as professional tap dancers, touring throughout the United States with several big bands.

In the 1950s, when tastes in popular music changed, Belcher and Hameed moved back to Pittsburgh and continued practicing on their own. Although they have known each other for over fifty years, these tireless dancers did not team up until 1981 when they decided to make a comeback. That year they got together with retired local "hoofer" Saxie Williams and performed as a trio at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Since then, interest in old-time street tap has steadily increased in southwestern Pennsylvania, both as good entertainment and as an important African-American performing art.

Henry Belcher was born on a farm in South Carolina where he spent his early childhood before the family moved to Pennsylvania. By the 1940s, he was touring with The Three Hot Shots, and, later, with a group called The Mad Magandis, whose costume theme was Arabian. In the 1950s, he returned to Pittsburgh where he married and took a job in a hardware store. Meanwhile, Nazeeh Hameed (formerly known as Irvin Taylor) started his career as one of radio station KDKA's Candy Kids. Later, he toured with The Fish Brothers tapdance team, which eventually became known as The Three Esquires. Hameed returned to Pittsburgh in the 1950s and got a job with Alcoa as a maintenance worker. Both men have since retired.

The kind of tap that Belcher and Hameed do is not the sort of tap usually taught in dance schools. With names for steps like "skiddleybops," "shim shams," "apple jack," and "fall off the log," their movements are extremely complex—what they refer to as "rhythm hoofin'." All they need is a wooden floor that isn't too stiff or rough. As The Dancin' Demons, they not only enjoy performing for an appreciative crowd, as they always have, but they also want to pass the art on to younger dancers in the next generation.

© 2001 On Tour Productions