No Maps on My Taps

NO MAPS ON MY TAPS is a delicious 60-minute account of the lives and times of three great tapdancers: Sandman Sims, Bunny Briggs, and Chuck Green. They dance a lot, to Lionel Hampton's music, and their work is wondrous to behold - especially Sims, who is perhaps the most legendary of the legendary three. But they also talk, and their brief interview segments hint
that each of these fine black artists has lived more intensely than most people ever dream possible. Nierenberg is a skilled documentarian, who understands the value of efficiency; the film moves at a quick tap-dancing pace, with a Bojangles lightness of touch. Nierenberg also understands how to set up a revealing confrontation - filming his subjects not just onstage and backstage, but in the littered streets of Harlem, where they have known their hardest as well as their most triumphant times. And most important, Nierenberg knows the value of concentrating on the subject of his film, bringing out its essence with no fuss or wasted time.
(Christian Science Monitor, 30.4.80)