Threaded Through Time

There is a fine string separating one dance form from another.

But funny enough, that same string is also what ties them all together.

It’s delicate, almost invisible. But it exists. Running through time, cultures, continents. Woven with displacement, celebration, rebellion, survival. And rhythm.

Let’s take flamenco. The Spanish dance. Fierce. Passionate. Known for its sharp footwork and proud presence. But did you know it finds its roots in Kathak? A classical Indian form. The swirling turns, the expressive storytelling, it all began there.

It didn’t start in grand theatres, though. It started underground. Literally.

A group of people, exiled from their homes, pushed out of their communities, found shelter in caves. There, they danced. Bent backs. Heads tilted toward low cave ceilings. The upright chakkars of Kathak, those majestic spins, became backward arches. And in that act of survival, of expression, something new was born. A form transformed by space, by struggle. The beginning of flamenco.

And then, there’s tap dance. Born not out of freedom, but in spite of its absence.

When African people were enslaved and stripped of language, identity, and expression, they found a new language. With their feet.

Their bodies became instruments. Their soles carried coded messages, stories, sorrow, and joy. They danced not just to entertain, but to speak. Rhythms became sentences. Stomps became syllables. That intricate footwork we admire in tap today? It was once a form of resistance. It was once survival.

It was also the foundation for Morse code. Yes—those feet paved the way for a system of dots and dashes that would change the world of communication. Even when stripped of speech, rhythm spoke. And rhythm stayed.

From here, Irish tap found its shape too. But it danced to a different beat.

Where African-American tap was loose, expressive, and grounded in polyrhythm, Irish tap was upright. Rigid. Shoulders still. Hands by the side. The expression was in the feet—fast, sharp, and percussive. It was born from traditional Irish step dancing, often performed in small spaces where large movements weren’t possible. Over time, it evolved with its own rules, techniques, and patterns. But both, Irish and African-American tap, found common ground in rhythm. Two different expressions.

Top row- Left to right- Flamenco dancer, Kathak Dancer, Bottom row- left to right- African- American Tap, Irish Tap

Two different histories. Same language of the feet.

That’s what fascinates me.

How displacement, struggle, and celebration can all live inside one 8-count. How people separated by oceans and languages still somehow ended up creating dance forms that mirror each other.

Because yes, every dance has its own grammar. Its own personality.

But behind every form is a story. And sometimes, those stories overlap.

It’s in those overlaps, in the shared rhythms and borrowed movements, that we realize something important.

Maybe dance doesn’t belong to one culture or one country.

Maybe it just belongs to us all.

A universal thread-fine, but unbreakable—tying us all together.