Streets echo with percussive shuffle

TOURISTS and small children stared in bemusement at a procession of women in polka-dot frocks and funny wigs dancing in the city through the Saturday morning traffic.

"Why are those ladies dancing in the street, mum?" one young onlooker inquired.

Others may have wondered too, but there was little time to ask as 200 tap-dancers stepped their way down Swanston Street like a brigade of over-sized Shirley Temples.

Onward they tapped, an unstoppable fluorescent army, hindered only by pedestrian lights, down to Flinders Street Station for a quick photo opportunity on the steps, then over the bridge to Southbank and along the river, where they took to a stage at Southgate.

Yesterday's noisy and colourful "march of glamour" through the city by the women and (three) men of St Kilda's Glamour Puss Studios Tap Dancing Academy ensured Melbourne fulfilled its obligations as part of International Tap Dancing Day.

Headmistress Jane Guy, aka Miss Jane, declared it a sight "more delightful than a plate of fairy bread at a four-year-old's birthday party".

"We aim to make Melbourne the tap-dancing capital of the world so we're sharing the love of tap among the city's unconverted masses," she said.

Although it may be an event not marked on many household calendars, the tap-dancing day began in New York in 1989 and coincides with the birthday of dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who partnered Temple in several films including The Little Colonel.

Glamour Puss dancer Helen Privett, a conservator at Museum Victoria in her "other life", was a vision in fishnet stockings, electric-blue frock and her real hair instead of a peroxide wig.

"I ran out of time this morning so it was either breakfast or the hair. Breakfast won," she said.