This Old-School Video of Dancers Tapping in Pointe Shoes Will Blow Your Mind

March 5, 2017

Oh my gosh, just watch it.

A post shared by Napoleon Dumo (@nappytabs)
on Mar 5, 2017 at 9:39am PST

We have none other than Tabitha and Napoleon D’umo to thank for bringing our attention to this little piece of magic. They posted it yesterday, noting that it deserved to go viral, and they’re 100 percent correct. The super old-school clip of three dancers performing an intricate tap routine in pointe shoes—THEY’RE TAPPING ON POINTE, YOU GUYS—is weird and wonderful and totally wild.

Here’s a fun fact: A little less than 100 years ago, this kind of spectacle would’ve been much more familiar to dance fans.The art of toe-tap enjoyed a burst of popularity in the 1920s and 30s, appearing in several Hollywood films. You can see amazing toe-tapper Joyce Murray doing a jaw-dropping routine from The Broadway Melody of 1929 at 3:07 in this video:

Dancers: dazzling the world with should-be-physically-impossible feats since pretty much the beginning of time. #OldSchoolEducation