About the Hoofer Awards

The annual Hoofer Award recognizes prominent tap artists as leaders in the community for their unique contribution to the form and for inspiring future generations.

Biographies

2001 - Gregory Hines (14 February 1946 - 9 August 2003), jazz tap dancer, singer, actor, musicians, and creator of improvised tap choreography, was born in New York City, the son of Maurice Hines Sr. and Alma Hines. He began dancing at the age of not-quite-three, turned professional at age five, and for fifteen years performed with his older brother Maurice as The Hines Kids, making nightclub appearances across the country. While Broadway teacher and choreographer Henry LeTang created the team's first tap dance routines, the brothers' absorption of technique came from watching and working with the great black tap masters whenever and wherever they performed at the same theaters. They practically grew up backstage at the Apollo Theatre, where they were witness to the performances and the advice of such tap dance legends as Charles "Honi" Coles, Howard "Sandman" Sims, the Nicholas Brothers, and Teddy Hale (Gregory's personal source of inspiration). Gregory and Maurice then grew into the Hines Brothers. When Gregory was eighteen, he and Maurice were joined by their father, Maurice Sr., on drums, becoming Hines, Hines and Dad. They toured internationally and appeared frequently on The Tonight Show, but the younger Hines was restless to get away from the non-stop years on the road, so he left the group in his early twenties and "retired" (so he said) to Venice, California. For a time he left dancing behind, exploring alternatives that included his forming a jazz-rock band called Severence. He released an album of original songs in 1973.  When Hines moved back to New York City in the late 1970s, he immediately landed a role in The Last Minstrel Show. The show closed in Philadelphia, but launched him back into the performing arts, and just a month later came Eubie (1978) a certified Broadway hit, which earned him the first of four Tony nominations. Comin' Uptown (1980), though not a success, led to another nomination and Sophisticated Ladies (1981) to a third. In 1992, Hines received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his riveting portrayal of the jazz man Jelly Roll Morton in George C. Wolfe's production of Jelly's Last Jam, sharing a Tony nomination for choreography for that show with Hope Clark and Ted Levy.  Hines made his initial transition from dancer/singer to film actor in Mel Brooks' hilarious The History of the World, Part I (1981), playing the role of a Roman Slave, that in one scene sees him sand-dancing in the desert. He followed that in quick succession with Wolfen, an allegorical mystery directed by Michael Wadleigh that is now a cult hit; in it, Hines played the role of a coroner. In 1984, he starred in Francis Ford Coppola's film, The Cotton Club (1984). Vincent Canby in The New York Times wrote about Hines' rare screen presence in the film: "He doesn't sneak up on you. He's so laid back, so self assured and so graceful, whether acting as an ambitious hoofer or tap dancing, alone or in tandem with his brother, Maurice, that he forces YOU to sneak up on HIM. The vitality and comic intelligence that have made him a New York favorite in Eubie and Sophisticated Ladies translate easily to the screen." The film was a seamless blend of dance into the framework of the narrative. The fierce virtuosity of Hines' dancing is seen in the White Nights (1985), in which he played an American defector to the Soviet Union opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov, playing Russian defector to the United States. "I haven't had a terribly traumatic experience as a black person in this world, but I've had experiences," Hines told Michael J. Bandler about the film. "My nature is to let them go--I wasn't going to be burdened with a negative attitude. So for White Nights I had to dig, but the pain was there." In 1988, Hines starred in a film that combined his penchant for both dance and drama, Tap. With full-scale production numbers filmed on location in New York City and Hollywood, and with an original soundtrack created especially for the look and style of the film, Tap became the first dance musical to merge tap dancing with contemporary rock and funk musical styles. It also featured a host of tap legends, including Sandman Sims, Bunny Briggs, Steve Condos, Harold Nicholas and Hines' co-star and show business mentor, Sammy Davis, Jr.  Hines' extensive and varied film resume includes teaming with Billy Crystal in director Peter Hyam's hit comedy, Running Scared, and the next year with Willem Dafoe, in Southeast Asia, in the military thriller Off Limits. He starred in William Friedkin's dark comedy, Deal of the Century, with Sigourney Weaver and Chevy Chase; Penny Marshall's military comedy, Renaissance Man, co-starring Danny DeVito; The Preacher's Wife with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston, once again with director Penny Marshall; Waiting to Exhale, with Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston for director Forest Whittaker, and Good Luck, with co-star Vincent D'Onofrio. He also appeared in the offbeat ensemble comedy, Mad Dog Time, with Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, and Richard Dreyfuss. In 1994, Hines expanded his talents to include the role of film director. His directorial debut was the independent feature, Bleedings Hearts, shot on location in New York. A contemporary romantic drama, it explored the precarious relationship between a thirty-year-old, white, male radical and a black, female high school student.  Hines work in television is equally diverse. In 1989, he created and hosted Gregory Hines Tap Dance in America, a PBS television special that featured veteran tap dancers, established tap dance companies, and next generation of tap dancers. The film was nominated for an Emmy award, as was his performance on Motown Returns to the Apollo. On the USA Network, Hines starred with Annette O'Toole in the critically acclaimed original film, White Lies, based on the novel Louisiana Black by Samuel Charters. He also starred on TNT with Christopher Lloyd in Lewis Teague's T-Bone and Weazel; with Sinbad, James Coburn and Burt Reynolds in the comedy western, The Cherokee Kid; with Judd Hirsch and F. Murray Abraham in Showtime's urban drama, The Color of Justice; on CBS-TV with Jean Smart in the thriller, A Stranger in Town; on the USA Network in the psychological thriller, Dead Air, and in Subway Series, the anthology-style film series for HBO directed by Ted Demme. Hines made his television series debut in 1998, playing Ben Stevenson, a loving single father hesitantly re-entering the dating world on CBS-TV series, The Gregory Hines Show. As Ben Doucette, he made up part of the gifted ensemble that won NBC an Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series in 2000 for Will and Grace. He also earned an Emmy Nomination as Outstanding Lead in a Miniseries or Movie for his portrayal on Showtime of the legendary and groundbreaking dancer/film star Bill Robinson in Bojangles, and also starred in the ABC/Touchstone mid season television series, Lost At Home. For three years, Hines was the voice of "Big Bill" on Bill Cosby's animated series for Nickelodeon, Little Bill. He voiced and sang one of the key characters (alongside Eartha Kitt, Patti LaBelle and Vanessa Williams) in the Fox TV/Coca Cola animated musical special, Santa Baby. He made his television directorial debut with The Red Sneakers, for Showtime, and also appeared in the film, which centers on a 17 year-old high school student--more mathematician than athlete--who becomes a basketball sensation through the gift of a magical pair of sneakers. Throughout an amazingly varied career, Hines continued to be a tireless advocate for tap in America. In 1988, he lobbied successfully for the creation of National Tap Dance Day, now celebrated in 40 cities in the United States and in eight other nations. He was on the Board of Directors of Manhattan Tap, the Jazz Tap Ensemble, and the American Tap Foundation (formerly the American Tap Dance Orchestra). He was a generous artist and teacher, conscious of his role as a model for such tap dance artists as Savion Glover, Dianne Walker, Ted Levy, and Jane Goldberg, creating such tap choreographies as Groove (1998) for the Jazz Tap Ensemble, and Boom for the 1997 Gala for President and Mrs. Bill Clinton, filmed for (ABC) at the Ford Theater in Washington D.C. Like a jazz musician who ornaments a melody with improvisational riffs, Hines improvised within the frame of the dance. His "improvography" demanded the percussive phrasing of a composer, the rhythms of a drummer, and the lines of a dancer. While being the inheritor of the tradition of black rhythm tap, he was also a proponent of the new. "He purposely obliterated the tempos," wrote tap historian Sally Sommer, "throwing down a cascade of taps like pebbles tossed across the floor. In that moment, he aligned tap with the latest free-form experiments in jazz and new music and postmodern dance." The New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described Hines' performance in 1995: "Visual elegance, as always, yields to aural power. The complexity of sound grows in intensity and range.”  In addition to his work on the dance and theatre stage, in film and on television, Hines' wide-ranging career also included making a 1987 album called Gregory Hines, and writing introductions for books Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers by Constance Valis Hill, and Savion! My Life in Tap, a biography by Mr. Glover for children. Everything Hines did was influenced by his dancing, as he told Stephen Holden in a 1988 interview with The New York Times: "Everything I do," he said, including "my singing, my acting, my lovemaking, my being a parent." He died in Los Angeles at the age of fifty-seven. Constance Valis Hill  

2002 - James Buster Brown (May 17, 1913, Baltimore, MD – May 11, 2002, New York, New York) James “Buster” Brown, the elegant rhythm tap dancer with a heartwarming wit who was much beloved in the tap community as a teacher and mentor, was born James Richard Brown, the sixth and only male of eight children. His father, William Brown, was an oyster shucker in Baltimore, and mother Mary Brown (Mary Ella Otho), who raised the children when her husband died, when Buster was six years old. Raised in the jazz age, listening to music and dancing, Buster became interested in show business, especially after seeing Albert “Pops” Whitman (1921-1951), son of Alice Whitman of the Whitman Sisters, who built the famous tap and acrobatic act known as Pops and Louie.   He first performed as one the Three Little Dots, a male dancing trio with John Orange and Clifton Payne. He attended Frederick Douglas High School in Baltimore (Noble Sissle, Cab Calloway, Baby Laurence Jackson, and Derby Wilson also attended), where he befriended (who was later to become) Earl “Snakehips” Tucker, from whom he picked up moves. With John Orange and Sam Campbell he formed The Brown Brothers, which became The Three Aces. After graduating around 1933, the act was renamed The Speed Kings because of the speed and precision dancing they featured. In Philadelphia, they launched a two-week tour with Jeni LeGon in a variety show that toured Washington D.C.  Around 1936-1937, the Speed Kings worked with Brownskin Models, which played the Apollo Theater.   After John Orange drowned in a swimming accident, Brown returned to Cleveland, Ohio, where he met Emmet McClure and Sylvester Lake. Naming the act Speed Kings 2, they danced a Soft Shoe, and then did “rhythm” dance. “We opened with the soft-shoe, and the music never stopped,” Brown recalled. “We segued into speed and precision dancing.” The act was influenced by and modeled after Pete, Peaches, and Duke, one of the greatest of precision dance teams.   Speed Kings 2 arrived in New York in 1939, playing the Apollo and Small’s Paradise with Earl Bostic’s band. In his spare time, Brown hung out at the Hoofer’s Club. The team worked through World War II and broke up in 1942. One of the last gigs was the Cole Porter musical film, Something To Shout About (1943), starring Don Ameche, Janet Blair, and Jack Oakie; also on the bill were Hazel Scott, Charles Walker of Chuck and Chuckles, and Cyd Charisse, making her film debut. After moving to Boston, having dissolved The Speed Kings 2 and working with a singing group called The Three Riffs, Brown moved back to New York to form his own solo act which comprised comedy and tap dancing. He opened with a soft shoe, closed with flash, and in between interspersed songs with jokes and dances. He also worked from 1945 to 1951 with the duo Brown and Beige (with partner Ernest “Pippy” Cathy), where they played the Apollo Theater. When the duo broke up in the early 1950s, Brown worked briefly with the Choclateers (Eddie West, Paul Black, and Gip Gibson, replacing West), a comedy, singing and dancing group who are credited with originating “Peckin,’”, which they performed in a Soundie. From the time Bill Robinson died in 1949 and through the 1950s, jobs in tap dance were scarce. Brown found several jobs, such as working for a record company (Broadway and 50th Street) and managing the Bobby Restaurant.   In the 1960s he began dancing with the Hoofers, a group that included Lon Chaney, Baby Laurence, L.D. Big Red (“Rhythm Red) and that performed tap jams on Monday evenings on 125th Street in Harlem. Leticia Jay was an eccentric dancer who had worked with Chuck Green. Around that time, Jay produced a television show that included Brown, Gibson, Jimmy Slyde, Fred Kelly, Chuck Green and Ralph Brown. In 1968, The Hoofers toured Africa for eight weeks with a State Department sponsored Jazz Dance Theatre, in which they gave a command performance or Emperor Haile Selassie who awarded them with “The Lion of Jedea Coin.” In 1966, Brown also toured as a soloist with the Duke Ellington Big Band throughout the United States and Canada, performing in one part of Ellington’s Sacred Concert entitled “David Danced Before the Lord” (in a role originated in 1965 by Bunny Briggs). In 1967, after moving with his wife Dorothy into an apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhatta, Brown began singing with the Ink Spots. At the beginning of the 1970s, Brown became a lifetime member of The Copasetics Club, founded in 1949 in memory of the great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. In 1974 he traveled with the group to New Paltz, New York, where he appeared in the tap dance documentary, Great Feats of Feet.   In the 1980s, as tap dance launched into its so-called renaissance, Brown picked up his career as a jazz tap dancer. He appeared in the Broadway touring production of Bubbling Brown Sugar and the Paris production of Black and Blue. Dancing and teaching at festivals and workshops across America, he continued working with the Hoofers, the Copasetics, with Leon Collins (as one of the “Schnitzel Brothers”), and as a single in Europe. He appeared with the Hoofers in the television production Tap Dancing, in the Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club (1984), and in Susan Goldbetter’s video documentary Cookie’s Scrapbook (1987).   In 2000, Brown toured with the Savion Glover and Friends production Footnotes, with Jimmy Slyde and Dianne Walker. In the late 1990s, he hosted his own Sunday evening tap dance jam sessions at Swing 46 in New York City, where he nurtured the next generation of tap dancers. In February 2002, Brown was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts degree from Oklahoma City University. When asked by the tap dancer Roxanne Butterfly what he thought made a dancer a great artist, Brown replied, “If you are making me feel like I am dancing with you.” He would also say, “It’s not in the move, it’s in the groove.” Constance Valis Hill  

2002 - Jimmy Slyde (October 27, 1927-May 15, 2008), the supreme jazz hoofer known for his musicality, impeccable timing, and ability to glide effortlessly across the stage, was born James Titus Godbolt in Atlanta, Georgia, October 27, 1927.  Around the age of three his family moved to Boston, where he received his early musical training at the Music Conservatory.  The training gave him a good conception of music, but standing in one place for a couple of hours and bowing was tedious, and he needed to move. Encouraged by his mother -- who wanted him to do something other than baseball, basketball, hockey, and football to contain all that physical energy -- he decided on dance, especially after seeing many tap dancers perform in Boston theatres and burlesque houses. He was enrolled at age twelve in Stanley Brown’s dance studio in Boston, where he watched Bill Robinson, Charles Honi Coles, and Derby Wilson practice their moves; and where from his instructor Eddie “Schoolboy” Ford he first learned to slide. “It’s pure magic, and I don’t know how he does it,” dance critic Sally Sommer later wrote about the move that became Slyde’s signature inscription over a bebop line: “He’s upstage left and sliding downstage right as fast and smooth as a skier, arms held out to the side, head tilted. He stops the cascade by banking backward, slips into a fast flurry of taps, working quick and low to the floor and ends the phrase by pulling up high and flashing off a triple turn.” Also at Stanley Brown’s studio, he met Jimmy Mitchell, who went by the name “Sir Slyde” The two developed an act called the Slyde Brothers -- Godbolt taking the name of Slyde -- and began appearing on the club and burlesque circuit in New England. As their reputation grew, they received invitations to perform in the shows the big bands were developing and taking on the road. The Slyde Brothers worked with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and other great bandleaders of the era: “When I was dancing with the bands, people loved it,” Slyde recalled:   During a song, I would tap about three choruses. And then the band would come back in, and I’d do another two and a half, three choruses. Then I’d close it up and whip it out. I tried not to get too mired in routines. I’m not a routine man. ‘Cause dancing is a translating thing, especially if you’re tapping. You’re making sounds yourself . . . different dancers have different sounds. Some dance heavy, some dance light. I’m strictly sound-oriented. Tap dancing fits with the music -- it’s like a summation there. As Slyde came into his own, opportunities for hoofers were drying up in America. In 1966 at the Berlin Jazz Festival, Slyde, Baby Laurence, James Buster Brown, and Chuck Green were hailed as “Harlem's All-Star Dancers” with a band comprising Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Illinois Jacquet (tenor sax), Jimmy Woody (bass), Milt Buckner (piano), and Papa Jo Jones (drums). Europe seemed the only remaining host for opportunities in jazz. In the late sixties, Slyde returned to Europe, and in the seventies, he expatriated to France and settled in Paris where, with the help of jazz pioneer Sarah Petronio, he helped to introduce rhythm tap. He returned to the states after performing in the Paris production of Black and Blue (1985) and was immediately absorbed into the tap revival. He was a much-in-demand guest artist on the national and international tap festival circuit; and with master tap dancer and teacher Dianne Walker was a strong presence in the Boston and regional Massachusetts tap scene.  He also served as a mentor to new artists by hosting weekly sessions at the club LaCave in New York City where he attracted an international array of dancers, including Herbin Van Cayseele (Tamango), Max Pollak, Karen Calloway, Roxane Semadini -- who he nicknamed “Butterfly” -- and Savion Glover, who called his teacher “the Godfather of tap” and “one of the true masters of the art form.” The decade of the eighties was glorious. Slyde was featured dancer in such films as The Cotton Club (1984), Motown Returns to the Apollo (1985), ‘Round Midnight (1986), and Tap (1989), starring Gregory Hines, and in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Black and Blue (1989). In his solo to “Stompin’ at the Savoy” in that musical he improvised with rhythms, coming down the backside of the off-beat, playing those edges, scraping his shoes against the floor, and sounding out the brushes of the snare drums. “His timing was impeccable,” Jane Goldberg remarked about Slyde’s ability to make the audience hear every sound in a phrase. “He was a real purist.” Slyde’s numerous honors include a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1999), a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship (2003) and the Dance Magazine Award (2005). Even as his health waned in his later years, and he was increasingly absent from the tap festival circuit, Slyde managed to mentor a new generation of dancers, among them “Rocky” Mendez (b. 1980), who received a Massachusetts Folk Heritage Award to apprentice with the master. He urged Rocky not only to go back to the basics—the time steps, shuffles, riffs, and brushes -- but to become immersed in rich depths of the jazz tradition. When Jimmy Slyde died on May 16, 2008, in his home in Hanson, Massachusetts, dancers around the world mourned him as the last great tap dancer of the big-band and bebop eras who experimented with rhythm and tonality, and who regarded tap improvisation and the ability to swing as a spiritually-enlightened conversation. Constance Valis Hill  

2003 - Brenda Bufalino (ATDF Artistic Mentor/Teacher) is a mixed genre artist; choreographer and tap dancer, a dancer who sings, tells stories, writes books, works clay into shapes that dance, and paints pictures. She has performed her one person shows Internationally and has appeared as a guest soloist at Town Hall,  Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center among other major venues. In February 2009, she premiered her latest show “Primordial Memories” at the Judson Church in NYC as part of Tony Waag’s “Sound Check Series.” She mentors, lectures and teaches master classes internationally and teaches many workshop series for the American Tap Dance Foundation in New York City throughout the year. As artistic director/choreographer of The American Tap Dance Orchestra she toured America and Europe with her company, and appeared at The Joyce Theatre, and on PBS “Great Performances…Tap Dance in America with Gregory Hines.” For many years Ms. Bufalino collaborated and toured extensively with her mentor Charles “Honi” Coles. She has received consecutive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and is a NYFA fellow. Her critically acclaimed book “Tapping the Source…. tap dance stories, theory and practice” is published by Cod Hill Press. She has created numerous DVD’s and CD’s… tapping, singing, teaching and telling stories, which are available from her web-site. She is the recipient of the Flo-bert Award, The Tapestry Award, and The Tap City Hoofers Award, all for outstanding achievement and contributions to the field of tap dance.  www.brendabufalino.com

2004 - Ernest "Brownie" Brown (April 25, 1916 – August 21, 2009) was an African American tap dancer and last surviving member of the Original Copasetics. He was the dance partner of Charles "Cookie" Cook, with whom he performed from the days of vaudeville into the 1980s.They performed in film, such as the Dorothy Dandridge 1942 "soundie" Cow Cow Boogie, on Broadway in the 1952 musical Kiss Me, Kate, twice at the Newport Jazz Festival, as well in other acts, including "Garbage and His Two Cans" in which they played the garbage cans. Brown's partner for his last 16 years was Reginald McLaughlin, known as Reggio the Hoofer.Tap performer and historian Jane Goldberg wrote in an e-mail message reported in The New York Times obituary:He had an amazing sense of "entitlement" in a good way. He always felt he belonged on the stage, shaking his shoulders in that jazzy, goofy move he was known for, even while Honi Coles was cutting Gregory Hines in a tap battle, or other of the greats were there. I don’t think Brownie was tap as much as jazz, and he had a wonderful feeling for jazz.Brown began performing professionally as a child and headlined at the Roxy, Radio City Music Hall and the Cotton Club in New York, the Latin Casino in Paris and the Palladium in London in the 1930s and 40s. He was the recipient of the American Tap Dance Foundation's Hoofer Award in 2004 and his last performance was at their 2008 Tap City festival in New York with Mr. McLaughlin with whom he appeared in the Chicago Human Rhythm Project Emmy-nominated documentary, JUBA — Masters of Tap and Percussive Dance. Brown died in Chicago at the age of 93.

2004 - LaVaughn Robinson (February 9, 1927 - January 22, 2008) Renowned tap dancer LaVaughn Robinson is South Philadelphia born and bred. "Hoofing" since he was seven, Robinson calls himself the last of the "street dancers." He learned his first time step from his mother in the shed kitchen of the family home, and South Philly street corners served as the academy where he developed his style and technique. With Henry Meadows and others (Howard Blow, Eddie Sledge), Robinson performed in acts with names like the "Dancing Dictators," and the "Dancing Jets", gaining respect for his close rhythms, and touring widely as a "class act."During the 1940s-50s he shared stages with such artists as Cab Calloway, Ruth Brown, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Maynard Ferguson, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Robinson actively pursued his dance career through the early 1970s. By then, many of the theaters and nightclubs that kept tap dancers employed were closing as the economics of the entertainment industry and audiences' tastes changed.In the early 1980s, Robinson returned to Philadelphia after a stint in Boston and began performing for contemporary dance and folk music audiences who were awakening to jazz tap. Robinson began teaching at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he was a faculty member for 25 years and was conferred the title of Distinguished Professor in 2005. He perpetuated the "Philadelphia style" of tap through the generations of dancers that he taught at UArts and at universities, dance festivals and artist residencies across the globe. From the mid-1980 thru 2003 he performed widely, both as a solo artist and with Germaine Ingram, his dance partner of two decades.Robinson has received many prestigious awards, including the National Heritage Award from the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, choreographers' fellowships from the Dance Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and Pennsylvania Artist of the Year, an award conferred by then-Governor Tom Ridge. His wisdom and experience helped to guide oral histories and documentation of local tap dancers by the Philadelphia Folklore Project and the Dance Collection at Temple University. He was featured in the PFP documentary videotape "Plenty of Good Women Dancers: African American Women Hoofers in Philadelphia," and he collaborated with Carole Boughter and Barry Dornfeld on "Dancing History", a biographical documentary on Robinson's career as an artists and teacher.

2004 - Dianne Walker is one of the most honored and beloved mastresses of tap dance, known for her elegant and fluid style of dancing that is delicate yet rhythmically complex. A pioneer in the resurgence of tap dancing in the 1980s, her thirty-year career spans Broadway, television, film, and international dance concerts. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she began dancing at age seven with Mildred Kennedy (Bradic), a professional tap dancer with a successful performing career on the New England and New York vaudeville circuits who ran the Kennedy Dancing School in Boston.  In 1978, Walker was a twenty-seven-year-old mother of two, living in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, and working as a staff psychologist at Boston City Hospital, when she walked into the studio of the reknown tap master Leon Collins, soon after becoming his protégé; in 1982 she became one of the founding members of Collins & Company. After attending Jane Goldberg's By Word of Foot II (1982) festival in New York City, disappointed to see the paucity of black dancers, Walker returned to Boston with the intent of teaching and helping to revive jazz tap for the young black dancers, subsequently becoming a mentor to such talents as Derick Grant and Savion Glover. In 1985, Walker attended the International Tip Tap Festival in Rome, Italy, and performed Collins’ classic tap masterwork, Flight of the Bumblebee, to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, establishing herself as a premier tap soloist. In 1989 Walker was featured in Great Performances: Tap Dance in America, hosted by Gregory Hines, dancing a solo to the swinging up-tempo Latin “Perdido.” New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning later described her as “a tapper from whom steps and moves flow like music, she has an easy warmth of presence that makes her dancing incandescent.” That same year, Walker appeared as one of the Shim Sham Girls in the movie Tap!, starring Gregory Hines. Walker is considered the griot, the holder of the classical black rhythm “canon,” bestowed on her when she worked as principal dancer in the Paris production of Black and Blue, as well as principal and assistant choreographer in the Broadway production of Black and Blue, and will always be remembered for performing “Memories of You,” choreographed by Cholly Atkins. Directed by Claudio Segovia and Hector Orezzoli, the show considered the quintessential black-rhythm tap musical of the century. Walker is the most sought after teaching artist in dozens of festivals nationally and internationally, and has been lauded with dozens of awards—- Boston’s Tapestry Award (1997), Oklahoma University’s Living Treasure Award (1998), the “Savion Glover Award for Keeping the Beat Alive” (2000), New York Tap Extravaganza’s Flo-Bert (2003), American Tap Foundation’s Hoofer Award (2004), Vancouver Tap Dance Society’s Rhythm Bound Award (2005), Flint Michigan’s Tapology Award (2006), and the Dance Magazine Award (2012), for her lifetime achievement in dance. She is considered by many female black tap dance artists as the transitional figure between the young generation of female dancers -- such as Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Germaine Ingram, Ayodele Casel -- and the “forgotten black mothers of tap,” such as Edith "Baby" Edwards, Jeni LeGon, Lois Miller, and Florence Covan. Lovingly nicknamed “Lady Di” and “Aunt Diane,” Walker is revered by now two generations of tap dancers who regard her as mentor, teacher and confidante.  Constance Valis Hill  

2005 - Sarah Petronio, one of a small group of female pioneer rhythm tap dancers melding the hoofing tradition with a female sensibility that incorporates musicality with luscious bodily form, was born on February 24, 1944 in Bombay India. Her father, David Samuels, and mother, Ruby Sassoon, were part of the Jewish Diaspora of Spanish Jews who traveled from Spain through North Africa, Iraq, India and Burma, where her grandparents were born. When the Japanese invaded Burma her parents fled to India where she and her brother, Jack Samuels (19 November 1938), were born. The family was extremely musical: her father played violin and her brother played the piano; and while her rhythmic sensibilities were informed by classical Indian music and the classical dance form Bharata Natyam, which she studied in high school, she loved listening to Rock and Roll (especially the music of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard) and remembers that “All the Indian teenagers were wonderful jivers.” Bombay was a very cosmopolitan city in the 1950s and infused with all forms of art, especially jazz. Her brother, an aspiring jazz pianist, introduced her at an early age to the music of Ahmad Jamal, Dave Brubeck, and Nat King Cole. She first became aware of tap dancing while watching Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in such American movie musicals as The Bandwagon (1953), An American in Paris (1951), and Singing in the Rain (1952). “While America seemed so far away and inaccessible,” she later recalled, “it was attractive because of the movies. And we danced all the time. I was a champion dancer, could do the twist and cha-cha-cha: I danced a lot; and was always known as a dancer.”In 1963, after the entire family moved to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, her father died; needing to make a living she sought work as a copywriter in an advertising company, all the while taking classes at the New School in theatre arts, creative writing, and voiceover production. She also studied tap dance with Henry LeTang. The next year she met Peter Petronio, who also worked in advertising; left for Europe, married, and in 1968 gave birth to a son Ezra. It was only after giving birth to daughter Leela in 1971, living in Paris, that the need to dance was renewed. She studied jazz dance and claquettes american in Paris with Sylvia Dorame, but unsatisfied at the simplistic approaches to teaching tap dance in the studio, grew increasingly mor serious (than her teachers) about learning the rhythmic structures of tap combinations. Within a year, she opened her own small studio in the sixth arrondisement of Paris, driven to learn tap through teaching and making combinations from steps that had rhythmic structures and musical sense: “I was basically teaching rhythm tap,” she recalls. It was within this period, in Paris in the early seventies, that she saw “Taps and Traps,” a performance featuring Sammy Davis Jr.’s drummer Michael Silva, and a tall and lean tap dancer in flared bell-bottom pants who was, she recalls, the first real rhythm tap dancer she had ever seen: Jimmy Slyde. “I had to speak with this man, I was very shy but asked him, ‘Would you be my guru?’” One year later, Slyde showed up at her studio, stood outside the door and listened: when he was invited in he said, “Dance.’” She did. As their friendship deepened, he led her into the deeper zones of rhythm tap dance, never naming steps and always insisting, “Don’t dance like me. You are a woman.”Soon he was inviting her up to whatever club he was performing in to dance to what became one of her signature tunes, “Shiny Stockings.” Dancing the jazz standards became de rigeur-- “Bill Evans stuff, tunes that turned me on,” says she. “Sometimes musicians could not play what I called, so I started going into things like Duke Pearson’s tune, ‘Jeanine.’” Dancing with Slyde, all the tunes, whether “I Remember You” or “On A Clear Day,” some of his favorites, had to mean something. Petronio’s first solo debut was performed in late 1970s at the Petit Journal in Montparnasse section of Paris, on a wooden-grooved tap dance floor she made, with musicians Maurice Bander (pianio); Pierre Michelot (bass) and Gilles Perrin (percussion), and Al Levitt (drums). Petronio and Slyde’s debut also took place in Paris in 1984 with It’s About Time, and was performed at the American Center, with Marc Hemmeler (piano), Louis Trussardi (bass), and Michael Silva (drums); a one-year tour of the show followed.In 1989, the Petronio’s moved to Chicago for five years. She began teaching, joining the faculty of Columbia Chicago Dance Center, and in 1993 produced one of the city’s first jazz tap festivals-- Chicago On Tap Festival, inviting such artists as Savion Glover, Ted Levy, Jimmy Slyde, Lon Chaney, Chuck Green, Karen Calloway, Van Porter, Acia Grey, and Leela Petronio; and performed nightly at such small clubs as the Green Mill, the Bop Shop, and the Jazz Showcase, and Alexanders with musicians Johnny Frigo (violinist), John Young (piano), Marlene Rosenberg (bass), Joel Spencer (drums), and Willy Pickens (piano). Petronio’s career blossomed through the nineties, performing at major tap festivals (Portland Tap Festivals, Soul to Sole Festival, Boston Dance Umbrella, The Australian Jazz Festival, New York Tap Extravaganza, and New York City Tap Festival, where she appeared in the 2001 Tap City “Tap Divas” concert with Brenda Bufalino and Lynn Dally. Though she now lives in Paris and is teaching less, she continues to perform in major festivals throughout the world, most lately with her daughter Leela who is herself a beautifully- accomplished rhythm tap dancer with a distinguishing hip-hop sensibility. Sarah Petronio is one of our veritable jazz tap dancers whose musicality, phrasing, intricate rhythmic motifs, swing, and insistence on listening to and working with jazz musicians in performance truly distinguish her as a jazz dancer. She blurs the boundaries between the music and dance, refusing that the music be mere accompaniment. Her ethos of improvisation, and the way in which she listens to and inserts herself into the musical ensemble is similar in practice to the great Baby Laurence-- though her sound and her rhythmic sensibilities are totally her own. She is an original jazz tap dance artist.Constance Valis Hill

2006 - Lynn Dally celebrated 25 years with the JAZZ TAP ENSEMBLE this past season in concerts at the Maison de la Danse in Lyon, the Joyce Theater in New York, and in major tributes to the late Gregory Hines at the Jazz Bakery and Ford Amphitheate in Los Angeles, as well as the Chicago and New York Tap City Festivals 2004. As dancer and choreographer, she has created a body of new tap dance works for the concert stage in worldwide touring with the Jazz Tap Ensemble.  She has appeared often with tap legends Honi Coles, Eddie Brown, Steve Condos, the Nicholas Brothers, Brenda Bufalino, Jimmy Slyde, and Gregory Hines in venues from Carnegie Hall to the Apollo.  Dally has received multiple choreographic grants from the NEA to create new work for the JTE over the past two decades, the Irvine Fellowship in Dance 2000 which led to the SOLEA project,  Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography 2001 for cross cultural research ,and the City of Los Angeles (COLA) Fellowship 2002 for her latest work, the evening length concert titled Dancing Blues.  Her long list of commissions includes Ruby, My Dear for Seattle=s Pacific Northwest Ballet; The Moment for ETC/ Chicago Human Rhythm Project; Tribute: A Valentine to Tap Dance in the Movies for the Palm Beach Festival.  Now Adjunct Professor in UCLA=s Dept of World Arts & Cultures, Dally continues to teach and perform internationally.  She was honored to dance in NY with Bufalino & Sarah Petronio in Tap Divas as well as Tap City=s AMasters & Mentors.@  Her first dvd, SOLEA, explores cross cultural rhythms in new choreography for a quartet of gifted dancers in bharata natyam, flamenco, modern, and rhythm tap.   She will appear with the Jazz Tap Ensemble this summer in the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, and next fall in the Salzburg Jazz Festival and again at the Joyce Theater in New York, Thanksgiving Week 2005. Educated at the Ohio State University (B.A. 1963 Dance & French Lit) and Smith College (M.A. 1965 Theater & Dance), Dally was raised in her family=s dance studio in Columbus, Ohio where she received excellent training in tap from her father, Jimmy Rawlins. She was exposed to concert dance, music, and theater from early childhood and was privileged to see Peg Leg Bates, Al Minns & Leon James, Hines, Hines & Dad, Mia Slavenska & Frederic Franklin, Bea Lilly, Robert Goldsand, and many others before she was 12.  The world of modern dance opened for her at Ohio State where she pursued studies in Graham, Limon, and Cunningham technique (supplemented by many trips to their NY studios and summers at Conn. College/ American Dance Festival) and danced in original and repertory works by Doris Humphrey, Anna Sokolow, Viola Farber, and more.  She studied improvisation with Judith Dunn & Bill Dixon, and later, modern technique with Margaret Jenkins in San Francisco.  Dally made her choreographic debut in NY at Kauffman Hall 92nd St YMHA in 1964 on a bill with Gus Solomons, Jr and Alice Condodina.  After teaching and choreographing at Ohio State from 1966-71, she left the University life to pursue the dream of a dance company.  She initiated Lynn Dally & Dancers in San Francisco 1974, presented new work in NY 1975-77, and presented LD&D in Los Angeles for the first time in January 1977 at the Vanguard Theatre in West Hollywood featuring herself, Linda Sohl-Donnell, and Fred Strickler among others.  She returned to tap roots in the late 70=s and was fortunate to study with Eddie Brown and to be in proximity to Honi Coles for over a decade.  She is recognized for her role in the renaissance of tap dance in America and continues to innovate in the first concert tap company which she co-founded in 1979.  Currently, she works both in and out of the JTE format as she strives to explore new paths in tap, dance on camera, and tap documentaries.

2007 - Deborah Mitchell proudly celebrates 13 years as Founder and Artistic Director of New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble.  This St. Louis, MO native is known throughout the New York area as a distinguished tap professional. She is the protégé of Leslie “Bubba” Gaines of the Copasetics and student of many tap masters including Broadway Choreographer Henry LeTang.   Her many credits include The Cotton Club Motion Picture, Broadway and Paris Productions of Black and Blue, PBS Great Performances, 5 international tours with the legendary Cab Calloway, and a partnership with Philadelphia native Germaine Goodson as The Rhythm Queens.  Under the direction of Ms. Mitchell, New Jersey Tap Ensemble is one of the most prominent touring tap dance companies in the state of New Jersey.  Ensemble tours have included in New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Lincoln Center, Town Hall, and The Duke on 42nd Street, Tilles Center and the Joyce. She is producer of the NJTAP Touring Tap Boot Camp and participates annually in festivals such as the New York City Tap Festival, St. Louis Tap Festival and Traditions In Tap.   She was a guest panelist on the subject of tap as an American art form at the Dance in the Millennium Conference, Washington, D.C. and participates in national and international programs such as the International Tap Association that focus on the promotion and perpetuation of tap dancing.  Having attained a Masters Degree in Social Work from Indiana University, Ms. Mitchell is a strong advocate for arts education. As a Principal Affiliate of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center for 6 years, she participated in the Center’s Dance Academy both as a tap an instructor and as a workshop facilitator.  Ms. Mitchell was instrumental in establishing tap dance as a technique to be offered to children participating in the Dance Academy. A master teacher and motivational speaker about the art form in many educational venues especially in New Jersey and throughout the tri-state, she also provides In-Service Training to teachers and dance educators throughout the tri-state area.   Ms. Mitchell is author, director and choreographer of the Doll Shop Arts in Education presentation musical specifically developed for school age children grades K-5th. An extension of her work with the NJ Tap Touring Ensemble is the Youth Company, the pre-professional division of the company serving young artists ages 12-17.  Ms. Mitchell is Chairman of the Tap Department of Sharron Miller’s Academy for the Performing Arts, Montclair, NJ on the advisory Board of Tony Waag’s Tap City in NY and Assistant Director/Choreographer for Theater Workshop/Peppermint Players, Marie Foster, Director and a Board Member for Alliance for Arts Education/New Jersey. In recognition of National Tap Dance Day 2006, Savion Glover presented Ms. Mitchell with an award for giving tirelessly to the spirit and legacy of tap dancing.  In March 2007, Dean John Bedford and Jo Rowan, Dance Department Chairman of Oklahoma City University, Ann Lacy School of American Dance and Arts management presented her with the Living Treasure Award “for preserving our American culture in her feet, in her mind and in her spirit.”  In May 2007, Ms. Mitchell was chosen by The New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day as one of the Flo-Bert Honorees and in July 2007, she receives The Hoofer Award from the American Tap Dance Foundation.

2008 - Derick K. Grant (Performer, Choreographer, Director) has an established career that spans over three decades. Under the direction of two time Tony Award winning director George C. Wolfe, he was an original company member and Dance Captain for Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk at both The Public Theater and on Broadway and also starred in the role of ‘da beat for the first National Tour of Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk. He created the critically acclaimed show Imagine Tap! and was appointed as the Co-Artistic Director of Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s Rhythm World Summer Festival. Mr. Grant was the recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Upcoming Young Artist, The Helen Hayes Award (Washington D.C.) for Outstanding Featured Actor as well as two additional for his role in Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk.  Mr. Grant also received two Los Angeles Ovation Awards for choreography and for best Ensemble performance in Noise/Funk, and was most recently recognized for Best Choreography for Imagine Tap! He was also nominated for the Lester Horton Dance Award for Best Male Performance from the Dance Resource Center of Los Angeles.Choreography and performance credits include The Apollo Theatre’s Get On The Good Foot (James Brown Tribute) local and national tour; The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ AFRICAN ODYSSEY program (EXPRESIONES LATINAS Festival); Opening number for Daniela Mercury with Brazilian artist Nego Gato; The Aaron Davis Hall Black History Month Celebration; The Queens Symphony Opera’s DUKE ELLINGTON CONCERT, Ann Arbor’s ARTS FESTIVAL; The Embassy in Portugal; THE CONNECTICUT BALLET COMPANY’s celebration of MEN IN DANCE with Brett Raphael; and as a special guest artist with The Jazz Tap Ensemble. Mr. Grant’s own production of the history of tap, A NIGHT OUT: TAP! toured the country successfully for three months. Mr. Grant also joined Mr. in Yonkers, NY, Vermont and Boston. He also appeared with violinist Sa-Idah for a tribute commemorating The Colonial African Heritage’s African Burial Ground Reinterment produced by the Schomburg Center.

2008 - Tina Pratt is an extraordinary tap, ballet and modern dancer, producer, writer and lecturer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Her performing experience is quite extensive, having performed with a number of fine entertainers, including Sammy Davis, Jr., Nancy Wilson, Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller, Frank Fontaine and Shecky Green.  The roster of great dancers she has performed with also includes Baby Lawrence, Bunny Briggs, Shorts Davis, Howard “Sandman” Sims, Hines, Hines, and Dad and many, many more. She has performed jazz-tap with such greats as Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Ernie Wilkins, Jaki Byard, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Tommy Turrentine and Milt Buckner.Ms. Pratt has presented lecture demonstrations on the history of tap dancing at Emerson College in Boston as well as the Selma Burke School in Pittsburgh, NY University, Boys & Girls High, NY City Public School and Libraries, and Pace University. She is currently working on research on the history of jazz-tap and toured Europe for several seasons, teaches at The Jazz Cultural Theatre, is a member of the “International Hoofers Club”, writes for Jazz Spotlight News paper and is Producer and founder of Show Biz Assoc. productions “Salute to Black American Dances and Dancers.”

2009 - Randy Skinner is an award winning American director, choreographer and performer. He has been nominated three times for Tony Awards and twice for Drama Desk Awards for choreography. Skinner graduated from Ohio State University and is a guest teacher at various colleges. He moved to New York in 1976 seeking dancing jobs, and Gower Champion asked him to be a dance assistant on 42nd Street in 1980. In 1985, Ginger Rogers cast him as Val opposite Karen Ziemba and asked him to choreograph a production of Babes in Arms that she directed in upstate New York and in Connecticut. His Broadway work as a choreographer includes the musicals White Christmas and State Fair. He choreographed the Broadway revival of 42nd Street in 2001 and also choreographed and staged the London, Australia and two U.S. national companies and the Amsterdam production of the musical. He has choreographed several staged productions for the City Center Encores! series, including No, No Nanette (May 2008). His Off-Broadway and regional theatre choreography work includes productions of White Christmas around the U.S., An American in Paris (2008 in Houston, Texas), Happy Days (2006 in Los Angeles), Lone Star Love (2004 Off-Broadway; 2007 Seattle), Babes in Arms (2002 at the Goodspeed Opera House), Abby's Song (1999 Off-Broadway, also directing) and Lucky in the Rain (1997 at Goodspeed). 

2009 - Mercedes Ellington Juilliard graduate; choreographed ten companies of Play On!, from San Diego's Old Globe Theater to Broadway, and PBS's Great Performances; Choreographed Ambassador Satch, starring André De Shields, Prince Theater, Philadelphia, Helen Hayes Theater, Nyack, New York and The Performing Arts Center, White Plains; choreographer of segments of CTFD Galas 2004 and 2002, at City Center. Directed/staged/produced, Society of Singers-East, Louis Armstrong Award to Bobby Short at The Pierre; directed and staged 2001 Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Tribute to the Spirit of Harlem; directed: Four Women and Cotton Club Rhapsody at Club La Mama; choreographed/directed Mood Ellington featuring André De Shields; appeared in several segments of Ken Burns' TV documentary, Jazz ; profiled by Dr. Billy Taylor on CBS Sunday Morning; choreographed sixteen productions at the St. Louis MUNY; artistic director, BalleTap,USA, aka DancEllington, Inc.(1982-1992); directed/choreographed Cotton Club Rhapsody at Club La MaMa; hostess of the Swedish Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall and Sweden; workshop program: Home To Harlem, for Radio City Music Hall Rockettes; choreographer/performer: Lincoln Center's Reel To Real Series: Story T'Ellington; choreographer: Yankee Doodle Boys; Carnegie Hall debut: 1999; Metropolitan Opera House debut: 2002; New York City Opera debut: 1977; choreographer: George M, for Gay Pride Series; choreographer: Queen Esther Morrow's Walk Tall Gospel Show- European Tour 2002-2003; Harlem Gospel Singers European Tour 2003-2004; director/choreographer for In Mahalia's Light, Passage Theater, Trenton, NJ; director/musical staging, In A Miller/ Basie Mood, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, NYC; choreographer: Talk of The Town, Bank Street Theater, NYC; choreographer: Crowns, St. Louis Rep and Cincinnati Playhouse In The Park; Crowns, for Arizona Theater Company etc.;serves on the Boards of Career Transition For Dancers, The American Tap Dance Foundation, The New Jersey Tap Ensemble, Board of Governors Friars Club. April 2003, awarded an honorary citizenship of Paris. Currently serving on the TONY nominating committee.

2010 - Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards has been apart of almost every major Tap movie or show that has appeared in the history of tap dance since the 80's. Accolades include an Astaire Award for Best Performance in After Midnight on Broadway; Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performance (Jason Samuels Smith at The Joyce Theater) & Outstanding Choreography (The Blues Project); The Hoofer Award from The American Tap Dance Foundation; Best Actress nomination in the lead role in the award-winning Independent film "The Rise and Fall of Miss Thang"; a Princess Grace Award; and the cover story for Dance Magazine.
In addition to opening the Harlem Tap Studio, Mrs. Sumbry-Edwards continues to appear as a special guest for shows and festivals around the world. She was elected to the Advisory Board as the Tap Advisor for Dance Magazine and served as the official Tap Spokesperson for Capezio along with her family, with featured them in their international advertising campaign. Mrs. Sumbry-Edwards was also the private tap instructor to the legendary Michael Jackson over the course of 11 years.Dormeshia’s career includes acclaimed runs on Broadway and off-Broadway in shows such as Black and Blue, the Tony Award Winning Bring In Da’Noise, Bring In Da’Funk, International Tour of Bring in Da’Noise, Bring in Da’Funk (dance captain/principal dancer/understudy to the lead role), and Imagine Tap! (featured soloist). She has collaborated as a special guest performer with Grammy & Tony Award winning artists including Fantasia (tour), and in celebration of International Jazz Day at The Kennedy Center with Al Jerrou and Dee Dee Bridgewater. Other stage performances include the national tour of Wild Woman Blues and Debbie Allen’s SAMMY (the life and times of Sammy Davis Jr.). She was also featured at the Freedom Sounds Festival launching the first Smithsonian African-American Museum in the US this year. Film credits include “TAP” with Gregory Hines, Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” (Assistant Choreographer), and “The Rodgers and Hart Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty”. Choreography credits include Michael Jackson's music video “Rock My World”, Apollo Club Harlem (tap choreography) and the Sophisticated Ladies which is featured weekly at the world famous Cotton Club in NYC.V credits include NBC’s Superstars of Dance (representing the USA), a national commercial for Tops and on MTV’s hit television series MADE. Dormeshia debuted her project “And Still You Must Swing” at Jacobs Pillow for a successful 1-week sold out run along with co-creators Jason Samuels Smith, Derick K. Grant, Camille A. Brown and Musical Director Allison Miller. Excerpts from the project has since been performed in LA, Texas, Vancouver with a future engagement at The Joyce (2019) to name a few. She credits her solid foundation and all-around training to her principal instructors Arlene and Paul Kennedy of Universal Dance Designs. Dormeshia has been and continues to be revered as one of the most dynamic performers in the industry today.

2010 - Acia Gray  Soloist, choreographer and master teacher, has toured extensively across the U.S. and abroad. She is co-founder of the Tapestry Dance Company with Deirdre Strand and currently serves as Executive/Artistic Director as well as the Artistic Director of The Soul to Sole Tap Festival in Austin Tx.  She has danced, choreographed and taught for numerous dance and academic organizations, and she has shared the stage with many of the greatest tap artists of the world. Ms. Gray was chosen to work with the late tap legends Charles ‘Honi’ Coles, and Jimmy Slyde and has been a featured dancer in several tap dance documentaries. Ms. Gray was inducted as a premiere member of the Austin Arts Hall of Fame and was nominated for a prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts as well as being a choreographer chosen for the NEA National College Choreography Initiative. Currently touring The Souls of Our Feet – A Celebration of American Tap Dance through the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces: Dance Initiative and was recently awarded the Third Coast Rhythm Project’s “Legacy Award” and honored as the “2008 Texas Tap Legend” by the Dallas Dance Council. Ms. Gray recently performed in Lynn Dally’s UCLA event Women In Tap, currently serves as the President of the International Tap Association, and is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Souls of Your Feet – A Tap Dance Guide for Rhythm Explorers.

2011 - Max Pollak, is a Bessie Award nominee 2011, 2010 Individual Artist Grantee of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and 2008 fellow in Choreography from the New York Foundation of the Arts. He is one of the most prestigious names on the international tap scene today. He is recognized worldwide for his superior musicianship and his highly individual style as the first person to merge authentic Afro-Cuban music and dance with American rhythm tap and body music to create RumbaTap.

Originator of Cuba's first tap festival, he has been teaching and performing there since 1998, and has worked with Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Cuba's top Rumba group, Chucho Valdés, Lila Downs and jazz legends Ray Brown, Phil Woods, Paquito D'Rivera, Slide Hampton and Danilo Perez. He is also recognized for making European and South American classical music more accessible by playing with classical ensembles in prestigious venues like Vienna's Konzerthaus, Musikverein, Havana's Teatro Nacional and Teatro Amadeo Roldan. He has performed with members of both the Vienna Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic as well as the Duluth Superior and Plano Symphony Orchestras, with the latter two as soloist in the Morton Gould Tap Dance Concerto. On faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, he travels the world with his group RumbaTap and is about to release his first CD recording.

2012 - Jason Samuels Smith (performer, choreographer, instructor, speaker, actor) is a multi-talented leader and lifelong advocate for the Art form of Tap. Over the course of his extensive travels, he has influenced, and at times, introduced the culture of tap dance to audiences of all ages and social economic backgrounds. Accolades include a Dance Magazine Award, an Emmy and an American Choreography Award for “Outstanding Choreography”. Mr. Samuels-Smith has also received Bessie recognition (NY Dance and Performance Awards); the Gregory Hines Humanitarian Award; Hoofer Award; Certificate of Appreciation by the City of Los Angeles for creating the First Annual Los Angeles Tap Festival (2003); Proclamation declaring April 23rd “Jason Samuels Day” from the City of Shreveport, Louisiana; the “Ivy of Education” from Brainerd Institute; the “President Kenny Award” from Stony Brook; an Andrew Mellon Grant/ Joyce Foundation Residency; an Alpert/ McDowell Residency Award; an Arts International Grant; National Performance Network and Map funding among others in support of his work. 

Choreography and special guest performances include feature films Outkast’s feature film “Idlewild”; Black Nativity; TV hit series Psych with Dule Hill as well as a live performance for Comic Con; Grammy Artist Mya on CBS's Secret Talents of The Stars; Fox's hit series So You Think You Can Dance (solo & company special guest performances); ABC’s Dancing With The Stars; and special guest appearances with world renowned singers including Jennifer Halliday and Lalah Hathaway. Other television and film credits include the TV One Christmas Special (2013), Dean Hargrove’s award-winning short film “Tap Heat” (co-star) and full length documentary “Tap World” (Executive Consultant); co-star of dance documentary UPAJ which aired on PBS (2014); Nostalgia:A Tap Film; AlleyOop Films music videos “Kaleidoscope” and “Nautilus”; and Debbie Allen’s AMC series “Cool Women” to name a few. Performances include Sammy (tribute to Sammy Davis jr.); Soul Possessed (leading role); Tony Award winning Broadway cast of Bring in Da’Noise, Bring in Da’Funk  (principal and lead roles); Savion Glover’s NYOTs (Not Your Ordinary Tappers and Imagine Tap!(leading role). He appeared in Michael Jackson’s music video “Rock My World”. Other stage credits include Cross Currents: Turned on Tap at the Queen Elizabeth Hall - South Bank in London, Harlem Jazz Dance Festivals, TAAP: The Art and Appreciation of Percussion , the NY Tap Committee/Town Hall’s 21Below! with Jennifer Holliday, The Cotton Club Returns: A Tribute to Great Jazz Legends, the American Institute of Vernacular Jazz Dance’s Darktown Strutters Ball Gala, the Career Transition For Dancers 20th Anniversary Jubilee among others.Samuels Smith continues to tour the world with his own tap company formerly known as A.C.G.I (Anybody Can Get It); JaJa Productions Band; Chasing The Bird - A Charlie Parker inspired work; “Transformation: Rhythm’s Roots , a collaboration with critically acclaimed musician Owen “Fiidla” Brown (commissioned by the Charles & Joan Gross Family Foundation).  He was commissioned by Harlem Stage to create Going The Miles in celebration of Miles Davis’ anniversary, and collaborated on NY Times Best of Dance touring work with Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Derick K. Grant and Camille A. Brown known as And Still You Must Swing. After 10 years of touring worldwide to sold-out audiences and critical acclaim, India Jazz Suites also billed as Fastest Feet In Rhythm has come to an end due to the untimely passing of great friend and co-star Kathak Master Pandit Chitresh Das (2015). The historic collaboration was memorialized in the critically acclaimed documentary Upaj:Improvise. Solo and company Performances have included some of the world’s most prestigious venues including an exclusive 2-week sold-out engagement at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Joyce, Danse Encore, Royal Carre Theater in Amsterdam, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, The Apollo, Carnagie Hall, Lincoln Center, the New York City Center Fall for Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, and at Sadlers Wells, Teatro Municipal in Brazil, Beizhan Theater in China.Jason’s extensive work as an instructor/mentor has had an immense impact on opening the doors to many careers of successful working tap dancers in the industry today. In addition to ongoing classes on faculty at Broadway Dance Center (NYC) and special guest workshops at Steps On Broadway (NYC), he founded and developed the Tap program and Monday Night Tap Jam at Debbie Allen Dance Academy (LA) and has consulted on several founding Tap festivals, projects and events in order to help garner success in supporting venues that highlight rhythmic arts. Jason has also privately trained numerous artists in the industry as well as coached dancers to prepare for Broadway and beyond. As a humanitarian, Jason has supported organizations such as Dancers Responding to Aids, Tied to Greatness, Career Transitions for Dancers, Groove With Me and Tap Into A Cure, and Witness, to name a few. As the first official Tap representative for BLOCH, he successfully designed, tested and developed his own professional tap shoe. Jason aims to promote lasting respect for the art form and to create opportunities for tap dancers, as he continues to provide leadership and open doors for Tap dancers around the world.

2013 - Dean Diggins Born in Hampton, Iowa on June 22, 1931, Dean Diggins, the elegant dancer who combined a fastidious style of rhythm tap with ballet, was born in Hampton, Iowa, the son of a music teacher. He began dance lessons at an early age, and by his teenaged years was giving dance lessons and operating two dance studios. During a stint in the army, he performed for Special Services. After his discharge, he moved to Chicago to study at the prestigious Stone-Camryn School of Ballet. From Chicago he moved to New York to study with the tap classicist Paul Draper. In 1957, Diggins formed the Mattison Trio with Guy Tanno and Dorothy Matthews, a balletic tap ensemble; over the next ten years, the group performed regularly on television, and in nightclubs and summer theaters.

In the late 1960s, Diggins made a career change, earning a doctorate in Psychology, later teaching at Brooklyn College. Though he retired from teaching to Kittery, Maine, he did not retire from dancing. In 1989 he performed Morton Gould's Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra at the Houston Symphony's 75th Anniversary Concert. He continued to perform, broadening his repertoire by applying balletic tap choreography to classical works by Bach, Handel, Haydn and others. He also wrote a tap dance manual for teachers titled Tap Technique: Graded Exercises from Beginning to Advanced Levels (1988), which ended with exercises taught to him by his mentor, Paul Draper.

In Kittery, Maine, Diggins became an active member of the tap scene, working with Drika Overton on various projects that included Clara's Dream, a jazz tap version of the Nutcracker ballet. He has participated annually in the Portsmouth Percussive Dance Festival, performing with such dancers as Josh Hilberman, Guy Nardone, and Brenda Bufalino. In 2005, Diggins received the Tapestry Award for Life Achievement in Tap at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts. In 2013 Diggins received the Hoofers Award, recognizing prominent artists for their contribution to the art form, from the American Tap Dance Foundation.

An Inventory of Dean Diggins Pepers, 1956-1995, containing material on Diggins's career as a dancer and teacher, class notes while studying with Paul Draper, clippings, photographs, programs, scrapbooks, and choreographic notes for tap routines composed to classical music are in Special Collections Division of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. Constance Valis Hill

[Source: Program, American Tap Dance Foundation, 2013 Awards Ceremony, July 9, 2013, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Walter Bruno Auditorium, New York, New York]

2013 - Barbara Duffy (10/8/1959 -), tap dancer, company director, and internationally regarded teacher has been described as a rambunctious virtuoso with street-smart edginess who socks audiences with “neatly modulated explosions of close to the body tapping.” Born in Webster, Massachusetts, of Irish parentage, she danced from age six (with Boston tap teachers Doris McGeary and Esther Dolan) to age twenty with Leon Collins in Brookline. Then she went to New York City with Brenda Bufalino and joined her American Tap Dance Orchestra, where from 1986 to 1995 she was featured dancer and dance captain. Duffy was one of the first in the company to carve out a separate career for herself as teacher and soloist. In the early 1990s, she played tap-dancing cowgirl sidekick to Savion Glover, Jimmy Slyde, and Buster Brown on the PBS-TV educational children’s program Sesame Street. Slyde admiringly commented that Duffy was “small in stature, but big in sound.”  But it was Gregory Hines who made the most enduring inscription on Duffy’s style of rhythm dancing. He invited her-- along with Mark Mendonca and Cyd Glover-- to be part of a quartet that would perform in Gala for the President in 1997 at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C., for President Clinton and guests. Hines choreographed Boom-- a rare Hines’ tap choreography, since he habitually was an improviser. The work set rhythmically tight-fitting unison tapping against free-style solos. It was also Hines who inspired Duffy her to create an all-woman tap dance company, Barbara Duffy & Company, which made its debut at the New York City Tap Festival in 2001 with Duffy’s Speedball. Although Duffy continues to teach and choreograph and has conducted workshops in more than twenty countries, her solo work is most often praised, as with her 2002 performance of Soldier’s Hymn at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. She danced “her own choreography of quiet and unhurried syncopation in conversation with the music’s rumbling rumba. Occasionally she introduced more ferocious phrases . . . by the end, as she marked out some gentle swishes, punctuated by a few leisurely staccatos, we were her slaves,” wrote the London Independent. In 2008, on a panel exploring the challenges facing women in tap, Duffy spoke about her company. “I like the camaraderie of dancing with women” she said about the group that had recently premiered Stages, a full-length work, using song, dance, dialogue, choreography, and improvisation to touch on issues of friendship and love, self-doubt, and the courage to express one’s true identity. Duffy said that she meant the work “to connect with a broader audience, leaving no doubt women can hit.” 

2014 - Michelle Dorrance (Artistic Director of Dorrance Dance/Choreographer/Dancer) is a New York City–based artist. Mentored by Gene Medler (North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble), she studied under many of the last master hoofers. Career highlights include: STOMP, Derick Grant’s Imagine Tap!, Jason Samuels Smith’s Charlie’s Angels/Chasing the Bird, Ayodele Casel’s Diary of a Tap Dancer, Mable Lee’s Dancing Ladies, and playing bass for Darwin Deez. Company work includes: Savion Glover’s Ti Dii, Manhattan Tap, Barbara Duffy and Co., JazzTap Ensemble, and Rumba Tap. Solo work ranges from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to commissions for the Martha Graham Dance Company and American Ballet Theatre. A 2018 Doris Duke Artist, 2017 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, and 2015 MacArthur Fellow, Dorrance is humbled to have been acknowledged and supported by United States Artists, the Joyce Theater, New York City Center, the Alpert Awards, Jacob’s Pillow, Princess Grace Foundation, The Field, American Tap Dance Foundation, and the Bessie Awards. Dorrance holds a B.A. from New York University and is a Capezio Athlete.

2015 - Karen Callaway Williams is an international, award-winning artist, recognized for her outstanding artistry and contributions to the tap world. She is known for being both the first African-American female tap dancer and dance captain in Riverdance – The Show and the only African-American female tap dancer and dance captain in Riverdance on Broadway. Other Broadway credits include the Tony Award Nominated Duke Ellington musical Play On. Karen has been featured on the cover of Flow Magazine and in the documentary, Been Rich All my Life. The story of the Silver Belles, a group of chorus girls from the 1920s. 1930s and 1940s. Ms. Callaway Williams has performed with the original Silver Belles at the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre; and for the likes of Bill Clinton, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. She is currently a Second-Generation Silver Belle and the Artistic Director of this group. Karen has toured extensively performing in 35 States and 13 countries having just returned from a two and a half month run of Hinton Battle’s American Variety Bang in Osaka, Japan.

Karen Callaway Williams is a living legend in the tap dance world. She is mentioned several times in the Tap History book Tap Dancing America by Constance Valis Hill. She was featured in a Black History edition of ESSENCE Magazine, which highlighted four female African-American tap artists. In 2013, Karen was a Flo-Bert Honoree and received the Florence Mills Award. In July 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Hoofer Award from the American Tap Dance Foundation. Dance Magazine heralded her as “a graceful dream with taps as happy as a song.” The New York Times called her “a gifted traditionalist with laughing eyes”. She was also appeared in the documentary Bojangles: the Legacy and in a special guest spot on Sesame Street. Karen is a Featured Artist and was the first Dance Captain and charter member of the New Jersey Tap Ensemble having recently celebrated 24 years with the company, performing in their high energy shows A Stop on the A-Train, The Next Step, Rhythm is our Business, By George It’s Gershwin and Pass it on.Ms. Callaway Williams taps can be heard tapping on Duke Ellington’s Music From The Sacred Concerts: as performed by the Princeton University Concert Jazz Ensemble as the Tap Dancer in “David Danced Before the Lord”, a role rarely performed by a female dancer. She has been featured as a tap solo artist with both the Baltimore and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras on several occasions; performing movements from the iconic Morton Gould’s Tap Dance Concerto. She was also featured with the Detroit and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras for their Yuletide Celebrations, and the BSO Holiday Spectacular. She has been a guest performing artist with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.Ms. Callaway Williams has toured all over the world: Performing with the Duke Ellington Big Band in The United Arab Emirates; in Romania with Tap City on Tourthrough the Unites States Embassy; in the All that Tap Taipei festival in Taiwan; in Canada with Tap Giants; and in Bejing, Mexico, and Canada with Riverdance.Over the past 30 years Ms. Callaway Williams has established herself nationally, and internationally, as a prominent tap instructor. She has taught for Spelman College, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan, New York City Dance Alliance, national and international tap festivals, dance camps, master classes and enrichment programs. She gives lecturer/demonstrations and educational assembly programs in elementary, middle and high schools for the Paper Mill Playhouse on “Legends of Tap Dance”. She traveled regularly to Zurich Switzerland as an instructor for the Zurich Tap Festival.Karen has also authored several children’s books introduce kids to tap dancing, including Gabriella’s Tap Shoes, Gabriella and the Tap Dance Floor, and Rhythms for Ruby. She is currently working on her forth book for children, Gabriella: The Girl Who Lost her Shuffle. Her books are available on Amazon and in The Dance Connection office.

2015 - Heather Cornell, tap dancer, choreographer, teacher, and the co-founder of Manhattan Tap, which was cited by the New York Times as being "one of New York's leading tap ensembles," was born in Ontario, Canada. She began her training at the age of four in tap, ballet, and jazz with renowned teacher Dot Blakely. She then continued her training at Grant McEwan College in Edmonton and at Yale University in Toronto. Three months before graduating she moved to New York City, at first to study Cunningham contemporary dance, but was soon introduced to her first mentor, Charles "Cookie" Cook, a veteran members of the famed Copasetics fraternity of mostly all-black tap dancers dedicated to the memory of Bill Robinson.As a modern dancer, living and performing in New York in the early 1980s, she was a member of Bryan Hayes' dance company. In 1983 she performed in Andrea Levine's tap dance revue Constant Play at Dance Theatre Workshop; in the program that included works by such diverse composers as Tchaikovsky, Artie Shaw, John Coltrane and the Beatles, Cornell danced a duo with Levine in "Swan Lake," a tap version of the cygnets dance from the ballet classic. Cornell was also a member of the Tap Dance Theatre of Gail Conrad, who typically drew on ballet and modern dance and working familiar tap elements into "pure" dance works. During this period, she began serious study at Clark Center with Charles "Cookie" Cook. In 1984 she performed on a program with Cook, Chuck Green, Leon Collins, Mable Lee, Marion Coles, and Tina Pratt in the Pepsi Bethel-directed "An Evening with Charles Cook and Friends" at City College's Aaron Davis Hall. In 1986 she performed with an ensemble of Clark Center tap dancers, including Charles Cook and Josephine McNamara, in Dancing Feet as part of the Center's Summer Dance '86 Festival. Cornell credits the development her style as an apprentice to Cook, as well as such other first-generation American tap masters as James Buster Brown, Eddie Brown, Steve Condos, Chuck Green, and the Copasetics, whom she performed with. In the 1980s Cornell was also a member of the Jazz Tap Ensemble, with whom she was cited for dancing with insouciant musicality. She also performed in Anita Feldman's tap work Body and Sole and was partner to the tap-dancing clown artist Noel Parenti.In 1986 Cornell co-founded, with Tony Scopino, Manhattan Tap, a jazz tap ensemble comprising four dancers (Cornell, Scopino, Shelley Oliver, Jamie Cunneen) and three musicians committed to old and new tap styles, repertory works, and collaborations. Performing primarily to jazz music, composer/pianist Keith Saunders became the company's musical director in 1989. Two of the company's earliest performances in New York were at the Village Gate's new series of tap performances, and the New Choreographers '86 series in Clark Center's Summer Dance '86 festival at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre. In 1989, Manhattan Tap was featured in the Great Performances television special hosted by Gregory Hines, Tap Dance in America, this the first all-tap program ever made for the prestigious television dance series. Dancing to an up-tempo arrangement of Charlie Parker's jazz work "Scrapple from the Apple," the company realized the heights of ensemble dancing which demanded high speed precision, synchronous movement, and split-second solos.Known for her collaborations with musicians on original jazz and world music compositions for tap, Cornell has worked with drummer Leon Parker, body musician Keith Terry, and jazz vocalist Michelle Hendricks; and danced with such musicians as Obo Addy (master Guinean drummer), Celso Machado (Brazilian percussion/guitar), and jazz artists Lewis Nash, Panama Francis, Clint Houston, Mickie Tucker, The Harper Brothers, and Robin Eubanks, John Benitez, Ralph LaLama, Lewis Nash, David "Fathead" Newman, and Carlos Seixas. She collaborated twice with jazz bassist Ray Brown, and in 1997 the Manhattan Tap performed with his trio at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. In June of 1998 Manhattan Tap premiered the full-length work Excursion Fare at New York's Joyce Theatre with a world music blend by Keith Terry and his ensemble Crosspulse. While Cornell's dancing is a visual and aural link to some of the great tap masters, her blend of original material from her mentors, to which is added her own style of concert tap and her extensive work in collaboration with jazz musicians and world music artists, resulted in her own style-- a relaxed and low-keyed style of rhythm tap that is musically sophisticated and deliciously languid, indolent and dazzling at the same time. On Broadway, Cornell choreographed the Tony-nominated comedy The Play What I Wrote (2003) which ran at the Lyceum Theatre. In 1996 she was the tap coach and choreographic consultant for Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera, created by the Atalaya Theatre Company in Seville, Spain. And in 2000, she premiered her show, Notes to Sone' with composer Bob Telson and Argentinian accordionist Chango Spasiuk.Cornell has also been a leading voice in awakening viewers to the particular style of female tap performance. In an interview with Itabari Njeri in 1998, speaking about the female invisibilty in tap dancing, Cornell commented that "Audiences are fickle…They respond to the hot ticket. And being a white woman hoofer is "just not the coolest thing right now." Referencing the ascendancy of Savion Glover's particular African-American tap aesthetic, Cornell did not dispute the phenomenal talent of Glover's but worried about what Njeri described as a "very aggressive, macho style" that had begun to define the art form "as the only approach," and thus running counter to the whole tap aesthetic which was about making a personal statement. Cornell demonstrated her point of view in 2008 when she was a featured performer in the historic Women in Tap Conference at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), forging a new direction in her solo career by playfully finding new sounds in her leather-soled shoes (sans metal taps) in interplay with Doug Walter.Cornell has also been integral in developing many leading members of the new generation of tap dancers who have gone on to perform on Broadway and other stages. They include: Max Pollak, Roxanne Butterfly, Jeannie Hill, Marshall Davis, Jr., Mari Fujibayashi, Josh Hilberman, Chikako Iwahori, Parris Mann, Olivia Rosenkrantz, Herbin van Cayseele, and Tarik Winston. The Alberta, Canada newspaper Banff Daily had the following praise for Cornell's dancing: "Heather Cornell maintains a relaxed and low-key style that is beautiful. Totally unpretentious, her artistry and talent prevail."Constance Valis Hill
[Sources: Jack Anderson, "The Dance: Miss Levine in Tap Revue," New York Times (May 1, 1983); Jack Anderson, "Dance: New Choreographers," New York Times (July 4, 1986); Jennifer Dunning, "The Dance: Gail Conrad," New York Times (January 13, 1985); Jennifer Dunning, "Dance: An Evening of Tappers," New York Times (November 1, 1984); Jennifer dunning, "Dance: Clark Centers Presents Dancing Feet," New York Times (July 26, 1986); Njeri, Itabari. "Shadowed Feats: The Forgotten Mothers of Tap-- and Their New Crop of Daughters" (Hoofing It: The Hidden History of Black Women in Tap") Village Voice (July 28, 1998, vol. XLIII, No. 30, 38-41); Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]

2016 - Roxane “Butterfly” was born in Toulon, France, as Roxane Semadini, her father French and mother Moroccan. Her earliest influences were the Arabic and Rai music (popular music of Algeria, Tunesia, and Morocco) she had listened to in the ethnically mixed downtown neighborhood of Toulon. She first discovered the great rhythm tap dancer Jimmy Slyde, who had been living in Paris from the early 1970s, at the age of nine at the Summer Festival of Chateau Vallon, and was thus initiated to jazz and bebop music. She also studied film at the University of Aix-en-Provence. In 1991 she moved to New York, where she studied with Savion Glover and Barbara Duffy, and supported herself by dancing in the street with a partner who called herself "Ginger from Paris," and with Herbin Van Cayseele (Tamango). But it was at Jimmy Slyde's jam sessions at La Cave, over a period of three-and-a-half years, that she developed her luscious freestyle rhythm tap, earning the nickname "Butterfly." She said of her development as a tap artist from 1989 to 1992: "It was the time between [the Broadway musicals] Black and Blue and Jelly's Last Jam . . . and I could not be in those shows. I wouldn't fit into the club because I'm European, I'm white, and I'm a woman."In 1994, Butterfly and Tamango left for Germany, for a booking to do a show with the Philharmonic Orchestra in Cologne. The gig fell through. She found work as a street performer with several African musicians, including the Coulibaly brothers, who she followed to Burkina Faso in west equatorial Africa, where she continued to work as a street performer. "West Africa changed me," said Butterfly. "It changed the way I understood dance as a lifestyle and as a way to communicate.” In 1996 she made her debut as a director at the Theatre de Suresnes in Paris where she first attempted to bridge European tap with America by inviting Savion Glover, Tamango and vaudevillian Rod Ferrone to participate in Suresnes-Cité Danse. That same year, she coached the brilliant tango-dancer Pablo Veron in the Sally Potter film The Tango Lesson.When she returned to New York City in 1998, after first returning to the states to perform in a Las Vegas hip-hop musical, Manhattan with such dancers as Mr. Wiggles from Rock Steady Crew, Poppin' Pete, Jazzy Jay, and the female b-girl Honey Rockwell, she realized "I wanted to do something with women, and for women. I wanted to know where my creativity would go with female energy." That creative energy found its way to her creation of her first ensemble, the women's collective Beauteez ‘N the Beat, which she directed for seven years. From that collective came the performance of Beauteez ‘N The Beat; subtitled "A Tap'n Hip Hop Rhythm-Tale," the show (opening 27 October 1998) at St. Peter's Church claimed to be the first tap and hip hop show created by women. It featured tappers Liz Homer-Smith, Charon Aldredge, Sarah Savelli, and Tina Pratt; b-girls Deena Snapshot and Colleen Miss Twist; and the poet/actress/playwright Sarah Jones, with drummer Bernice Brooks. The ensemble performed at several venues in New York, including Town Hall, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Saint Mark's Church, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and Symphony Space. In 1999, Butterfly was the only woman tap dancer to receive a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement, and in 2006 received a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award for the creation of original tap choreography.Butterly has toured the Western and Eastern hemispheres, from Africa to Asia via the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, presenting original tap works on the music and dance scenes, and collaborating with artists from various corners of the creative world. She is known as a poet and teacher, and is internationally renowned for her improvisational tap skills. She has made works that embrace women's rights issues, from domestic violence to female genital mutilation and the representation of women in the media. " In 2002 Butterfly was selected as one of the ‘25 Best' by Dance Magazine. Her company's repeated appearances at Symphony Space owed her to be mentioned among the five most innovative dance artists of the 2004 season by Backstage magazine. As a dancer deeply dedicated to using live-music in all her performance, she is the founder and artistic director of Roxane Butterfly's Worldbeats, a touring company of world-music and dance artists that operates in New York and Barcelona.  The Worldbeats 2005 performance of Gelaba Groove was critically acclaimed, as was, that same year, that same year, Hoofologies, created and performed by Butterfly, with musical direction by Graham Haynes and tap dancers Max Pollak, Yoshiko Hida, and Joseph Wiggan.Butterfly resides in Barcelona, where she founded the Jimmy Slyde Institute; she continues to be celebrated as an international ambassador of rhythm tap.Constance Valis Hill
[Sources: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010); Tap Dance in America: A Twentieth-Century Chronology of Tap Performance on Stage, Film, and Media.

2016 - Ted Levy, tap dancer and Broadway performer and choreographer, was born Ted Lewis Levy ion April 25, 1960, in Chicago, Illinois. His mother was a chorus dancer at the famed black-owned Club DeLisa..  He was trained at an early age by Shirley Hall Bass and Finis Henderson II, master tap dancer and former manager of Sammy Davis Jr.  Henderson encouraged Ted to pursue a professional career in the performing arts, which began at The Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Levy was "discovered" by Dianne Walker and members of the Copasetics when they performed in the 1985 Chicago production Shoot Me While I'm Happy. He made his Broadway debut in the musical Black and Blue (1989), in which he was a featured dancer in "Butter and Egg Man," choreographed by Fayard Nicholas. The musical megahit won a number of Tony Awards, including one for its four choreographers-- Cholly Atkins, Henry LeTang, Frankie Manning, and Nicholas.On television, Levy was awarded an Emmy for his television debut performance in the PBS special Precious Memories, and in 1992 made his film debut in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X.  That same year saw the production of Ted Levy and Friends, which included Gregory Hines (who directed), Savion Glover, and Jimmy Slyde, among others. He then collaborated with George C. Wolfe and Gregory Hines on the choreography for the Broadway production of Jelly's Last Jam, for which he received a Tony nomination, Drama Desk Award nomination, and Outer Critics Circle Award. Influenced by Hines, Levy made his directorial debut in 1994 as director of Savion Glover's Dancing Under the Stars at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Delacorte Theater. As a versatile theater artist skilled in acting, sing, and tap dancing, Levy directed the workshop production of Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk. When that show, directed by George C. Wolfe, became a smash hit, with a planned move to Broadway in 1996, Levy was charged with recruiting and training young dancers in Savion Glover's hard-hitting rhythm-tap style. In February 1997, eight male students were enrolled in the first three-month course in which Levy taught them the rhythm-tapping styles of such masters as Lon Chaney, Chuck Green, and Jimmy Slyde, who had described the tradition as "the art of sound."Ted appeared in the movie Bojangles with Gregory Hines, and returned to Broadway as Papa Jack in Susan Stroman & Harry Connick Jr.’s Thou Shalt Not.  Ted portrayed the role of The Mikado in The Ford Theater’s production of The Hot Mikado, for which he won a Helen Hayes Award. Ted’s most recent accomplishments include appearing in Fly, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen; Sammy, the Leslie Bricusse musical about the life of Sammy Davis Jr.; and a 2011 Joseph Jefferson nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a musical. In 2015 Ted was a leading figure in the film documentary Tap World, directed by Dean Hargrove. He continues to be a mentor to this new generation of tap dance artists.

2017 - Sam Weber is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed performing artist, master teacher and choreographer who regularly appears throughout the world. A protege of Stan Kahn in San Francisco, Sam Weber has appeared with such tap legends as Charles "Honi" Coles, Steve Condos, Jimmy Slyde, Gregory Hines and the Nicholas Brothers.  Sam's versatility has led him to performances in musical theater and television, where he has worked with such stars as Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Andy Williams, Pat Boone and Sara Vaughn.  Sam co-starred in the award-winning German short film "Zwei Im Frack," directed by Christian Stahl in September, 2000.  Sam has also performed with the San Francisco Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Peninsula Ballet Theatre and Smuin Ballets/SF.  Sam Weber was frequently seen on PBS's "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" television show and is featured in the documentary "Juba! Masters of Percussive Dance" on Public Television.     Sam is one of the few tap dancers in the world currently performing Morton Gould's "Tap Dance Concerto" and was the first tap dancer to receive a "Bessie" award, presented in New York City in 1993 in recognition of outstanding creative achievement.  In addition to his solo tap dancing career, Sam has toured internationally since 1986 as a principal dancer and choreographer with the Jazz Tap Ensemble. 
   
Sam Weber has performed and taught at tap dance workshops and festivals worldwide.  These have included the Chicago Human Rhythm Project as well as tap festivals in Boulder, CO, Portland, OR, St. Louis, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Vancouver, B.C., Atlanta, Houston, Austin, Boston, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Prague, Kiev, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Wuerzburg, Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Duesseldorf, Zurich, Helsinki, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Rio De Janeiro, San Antonio, TX, Gainesville, FL and the San Francisco Tap Festival. Sam has taught in the dance departments of UCLA, Cal State University, L.A., Long Beach City College, Cal State Fullerton and San Francisco State University. Sam appears as guest artist in residence with Sierra Nevada Ballet www.sierranevadaballet.com. Sam Weber frequently performs the work of German composer/violinist/tap dancer Andreas Daenel.  The two dancers have performed Daenel's compositions for tap dancers and orchestra "Kontralog" and "SignADiapunktur," which premiered in the U.S. with the San Francisco Bay Area's Peninsula Symphony Orchestra in 2005. Sam is the recipient of several awards, including the "Legacy Award," from San Antonio's "Third Coast Rhythm Project," for his work as a teacher and performer. He has received the San Francisco Bay Area Tap Festival's "Giant Steps" award for his lifelong contribution to the development of tap dance in the Bay Area, and he has also received the prestigious "Juba" award from the Chicago Human Rhythm Project in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the art of tap dance. 

2017 - Ayodele Casel, tap dancer, choreographer, and teacher noted for representing the new generation of high-heeled and low-heeled women in tap, was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1975, and of Puerto Rican heritage. Raised by her mother, Aida Tirado, her father, Tayari Casel, was a renowned martial artist from Chicago. She spent her formative years in Rincon, Puerto Rico, where she listened to the Puerto Rican Salsa orchestra El Gran Combo and singers Hector LaVoe and Celia Cruz, her rhythmic sensibilities were etched by the music of Salsa-- a mixture of Spanish and African music based on the son, and Afro-Cuban Latin jazz, which includes meringue, songo, son, mambo, Timba, bolero, charanga, and cha cha cha. She returned to New York City in 1990 and in the Fall of 1995, in her sophomore year in the Undergraduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she began the study of tap dance with Charles Goddertz. One year later, she met and befriended Baakari Wilder, who began showing Casel tap steps, took her to tap jams at Fazil’s and Deanna's, and introduced her to Savion Glover who, impressed with her tap dancing, invited Casel to be the only female dancer in his fledgling company Not Your Ordinary Tappers (NYOT). In a performance with the company in Savion Glover/Downtown, Casel was the first woman to be partnered by Glover in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers' styled "Cheek to Cheek." But it was her own solo, set to a tango with original music arranged by the band, that showed her off as a rhythm-savvy soloist.Hailed by the legendary Gregory Hines as “one of the top young tap dancers in the world,” Casel has been creating and presenting her own work with the production of Ayo! (1999, Triad Theatre on 72nd Street), tap dancing with a Latin band that included Joe Medina (violin), Sammy Galvez (flute and vocals), Gil Suarez (piano), James Guevarez (timbales), Danny Del Valle (congas, vocals), Edward Iglesias (trombone), and Wilson Aponte (vocals and small percussions). She continued a career as a soloist, in 2007 she starred in Rob Kapilow's tap dance concerto entitled Paddywack: A Tap Dance Concerto" performed at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. In 1999, she appeared in The Rodgers & Hart documentary film Thou Swell, Thou Witty, as well as performing in Roxane Butterfly's Beauteez ‘N the Beat at The Supper Club in New York. She also performed in T.A.P.P. - The Art and Appreciation of Percussion (2000), with the Jazz Tap Ensemble at the Joyce Theatre (2005), in Hank Smith's The Story of Tap: Sequel (2005), and in the premiere of Jason Samuels Smith's Charlie's Angels (2006) at Chicago's Harris Theatre. In 2006, Casel produced Tappy Holidays, the first of many Christmas tap shows at New York's Symphony Space.Ayodele’s television and film credits include “Third Watch,” “Law and Order”, “The Jamie Foxx Show”, “Bojangles”, “Savion Glover’s Nu York”. Ayodele originated the role of Yvonne in Nelsan Ellis’ heart-wrenching play “UGLy” to great reviews at NYC’s Fringe Festival and Santa Monica Playhouse. She also originated the role of “The Doll” in Derick Grant’s “Imagine Tap!” which premiered at The Harris Theater in Chicago. Ayodele currently serves on the Artist Board for New York City Center’s Encores! Under the artistic direction of Tony Award winner Jeanine Tesori.She has appeared on the cover of Dance Spirit, American Theater Magazine, The Village Voice and has been featured in many other magazine articles.  Ayodele, also a Capezio Athlete, was featured alongside Sutton Foster and Jonathan Groff in Off-Center Encores! Jamboree! at New York City Center and performed her work “While I Have The Floor” at City Center’s Fall for Dance this Fall. She was most recently seen performing at the St. James Theater in NYC for a “Broadway For Hillary” Fundraiser with Michael Mayer as director. She is on faculty at A Broader Way, LA Dance Magic, and Marymount Manhattan College. She is the co-director of Original Tap House and Operation:Tap.

2018 - Katherine Kramer “At he heart of my work is a desire to bring people together, to encourage intimacy, and to promote the value of play as a tool in creating a more humane world."

If you’ve met KATHERINE KRAMER, you’ll know her artistic statement isn’t just words – it’s the way she lives her life, borne of her collaborative spirit and devotion to rhythm and movement in multiple forms. She’s an irrepressible community builder. If you ask her what she’s doing now, she might answer, “I’m incubating projects, cavorting with local movers and shakers, conducting workshops, retreats, collaborations with international colleagues, and mentoring individuals. Please stop in!” And she means it. A gypsy at heart, Katherine’s multitudes of home cities haven’t prevented her from being consistently considered a root in the tree of tap dance. She’s been a consistent presence in its resurgence and evolution since the 1970s, when she tapped on Manhattan sidewalks and danced in an early Brenda Bufalino company. She drew great inspiration from the greats and is committed to sharing this legacy.

In the 1980s, living in Puerto Rico, Katherine introduced tap to San Juan dance schools and jazz clubs. Moving to Lexington, KY, she co-directed Syncopated, Inc. and began her now-legendary artistic gatherings by inviting guest artists such as Brenda Bufalino and Honi Coles. She was honored by an invitation to Honi Cole’s first choreographic residency at the Colorado Dance Festival. In the 1990’s, residing in Woodstock, NY, Katherine developed and toured solo shows internationally. She also instigated the Highwood Tap Salon, hosting tap pals Josh Hilberman, Drika Overton, Julia Boynton, and many others. She continued to perform, and in 1995 she was a featured performer at the NY Tap Extravaganza. Another move. In Bozeman, MT Katherine produced 10 dance and music festivals featuring artists such as Dianne Walker, Sarah and Leela Petronio, Jeannie Hill, and the late Daniel Nagrin and Jimmy Slyde. In the 2000’s in Miami (yes, the gypsy moved again, at home anywhere), Katherine taught at several universities and produced collaborative shows, including Not at Home, with Brenda Bufalino and Ara Fitzgerald. Traveling in Cuba and Brazil, Katherine taught tap at Conjuncto Folklorico, and Danza Contemporanea. Then, with Valeria Pinheiro, she collaborated, taught and performed in Brazil, Montana and Alaska. With a Creation Fund Grant from the National Performance Network, she developed Stop Look Listen, which was then produced for SoundCheck, in NY.  It was adapted it to the screen as A Shout at the Dawn with screendance director, Susannah Newman. All the while, Katherine’s been performing here and abroad. She has won grants and fellowships for choreography, including a Fulbright, an Artist’s Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council, and now, the 2018 Hoofer Award.  While tap dance has been central to her career, she has created works for ballet and jazz companies ­  even museums. She choreographs for theatre companies, television, and film, including for Robert Redford on his film, The Horse Whisperer. Katherine is a master teacher and has recently been working with the prestigious national organization, YoungArts. She has developed Whole Body Music, a teaching method for movers and musicians. Currently based in Madison, WI, Katherine is developing a writing/video/performance project, Taproot. It traces the footsteps, shares the lessons, and tells the stories of an itinerant dancer and the “wagon train” of friends supporting her journey. The welcome mat is out, wherever you find her.

2018 - Jared Grimes is a quadruple threat in the world of the arts where he is heavily making his mark in singing, dancing, acting, and choreographing. On numerous occasions, he has danced alongside legends such as Wynton Marsalis, Gregory Hines, Ben Vereen, Jerry Lewis, Fayard Nicholas and also performed for Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy at the Kennedy Center. Grimes has toured with Musical legend Mariah Carey, under the choreography of Marty Kudelka, and danced for artists such as Common, Salt-n-Pepa, Envogue, Busta Rhymes and the Roots. Jared's theater credits include, "After Midnight on Broadway", directed by Warren Carlyle, "Twist", directed by Debbie Allen, "Babes in Arms" at the Goodspeed Opera House choreographed by Randy Skinner, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" directed by John Rando at (Encores) and “Broadway Underground” directed by himself.Grimes has appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola, Subway, MTV and television shows such as CBS' "Star Search," "Showtime at the Apollo," ABC Family's "Dance Fever" and "The Jerry Lewis Telethon." His television acting credits include Foxs' "Fringe" and HBO's "Boardwalk Empire". Grimes made his choreography debut in Cirque Du Soleil's, Banana Shpeel off-broadway, choreographed commercials for Chilis and also assisted choreography with Kristin Denehy for Macy's popular Kids Bop commercial.Recently he is a choreographer of "After Midnight on Broadway" and associate choreographer of "Holler If You Hear Me" the Tupac musical. His feature film credits include, Paramount's, "The Marc Pease Experience", starring Ben Stiller, New Line Cinema's "Little Manhattan" and Elevation Filmwork's' "First Born," starring Elizabeth Shue.  Jared was a lead in the Radio CIty Spring Spectacular and recently choreographed the feature film "Breaking Brooklyn" with director Paul Becker.

2019 - Chloe Arnold Emmy Nominated Choreographer, and International tap star Chloé Arnold was discovered at a young age in Washington, DC by the legendary Debbie Allen. A leading lady of tap, Chloé has performed on stages around the globe and her choreography has been featured in over 50 episodes of The Late Late Show With James Corden, including the hit Crosswalk The Musical, Aladdin with Will Smith, Mena Massoud, and Naomi Scott.  Also on hit television shows such as So You Think You Can Dance, Good Morning America, HBO's Black Lady Sketch show, and national commercials/print campaigns for Special K, Macy’s, GAP, Aldo/Refinery 29, and Cantu.   Chloé’s is the Artistic Director & Founder of Syncopated Ladies, an all-female Tap company that are widely known for viral videos that have accumulated over 50 million views. The most successful being their tribute to Prince and their cover of Beyoncé’s Formation, which Beyoncé shared on all of her social media and then hired Chloé and the Syncopated Ladies to perform at her Ivy Park active wear clothing line launch at TopShop, London. Chloé along with her company performed live on ABC's Good Morning America and have had sold-out concerts in Los Angeles, Dubai, New York City and Washington, DC, receiving rave reviews in The New York Times and more.   Chloé is also a female entrepreneur that holds a degree from Columbia University. She and her sister co-founded Chloé and Maud Productions and DC Tap Festival, and co-produced the award-winning documentary TAP WORLD with Hollywood Executive Producer Dean Hargrove.  Other career highlights include winning So You Think You Can Dance: Dance Crew Battle (Season 11), HBO’s The Comeback, recurring role as an Onyx Girl on HBO's Boardwalk Empire, guest performing on America's Got Talent and Dancing With The Stars, a sold-out NY run of her One Woman show My Life. My Diary. My Dance. at La MaMa in New York City, Global Fusion Concert in Dubai, Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids Easter Bonnet at The Minskoff Theatre, numerous musical productions with Debbie Allen including performing at a star-studded gala hosted by Diddy at the Howard Theatre in Washington, DC. 

2019 - Michela Marino Lerman is a globally sought after tap dance artist, performer, choreographer, educator and all-around creative spirit. The Huffington Post has called her a “hurricane of rhythm” and the NY Times has called her both a “prodigy” and has described her dancing as “flashes of brilliance”. She is very proudly a student of Buster Brown, Gregory Hines, Leroy Myers and Marion Coles. Lerman has performed, choreographed, produced, and directed many projects throughout her career but she holds closest to her heart the shows she has led as a bandleader at some of New York’s greatest music venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Smalls, Ginny’s Supper Club, Joe's Pub and many more. Her most current music project is called "Love Movement". In 2017 Michela conceived, co-created, choreographed, and starred in “This Joint is Jumpin” which debuted in Andrew Lloyd Weber's new London West End Theater, The Other Palace. Michela is a proud member of the band Michael Mwenso and the Shakes and can be seen performing and touring with them regularly. She also has had the esteemed honor of performing with many masters such as Wynton Marsalis, Savion Glover, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, Roy Hargrove, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Benny Golson, Barry Harris, Marcus Roberts and many, many more.

2020 - Charles Goddertz has been dancing professionally, on and off broadway since 1966. He has worked with Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Bernedette Peters, Donna Mckechnie and has tap danced in the musical Seesaw, for Tommy Tune. Charles currently teaches tap dancing at Steps On Broadway here in New York City and has been on Faculty since 1986. He has taught tap dancing for Cap 21/NYU Tisch, Dance Educators of America, Dance Masters of America, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Moscato Tap Festival in Rome and Milan, Big Apple Tap Festival and Tap City. His students have tap danced on Broadway, Las Vegas, for The Rockettes and tap festivals around the world. A brief listing of students include Raquel Valiente, Darrin Contessa, Paula Legget Chase, Joni Michelle, Ayodele Casel & Kazu Kumagai. Mr. Goddertz’s own tap dance performance background includes First Night Burlington-a New Years Gala, Danny Hoctor’s Dance Caravan, Moscato Tap Festivals Rome and Milan, The Tap Extravaganza, of which he received the Flo-Bert Award in 2011, Steps Beyond and Tap City with dance partner, the late Michele Ribble. Charles has been tap dancing since the age of five, when his mother taught him his first Irish and waltz clog. Having been selected to receive the prestigious Hoofer Award from the American Tap Dance Foundation, here in 2021, he will do so in memory of Michele Ribble, mentor Jack Stanly and his dear mother and family, who have so ardently supported him through the years.

2020 - Linda Sohl-Ellison, Artistic Director and Choreographer of Rhapsody In Taps co-founded in l981 with Toni Tack in 1981. Linda has a BFA from Ohio University in Dance and Graphic Design and an MA from UCLA. Her training includes studies under the great tap masters Foster Johnson, Eddie Brown, Honi Coles and Buster Brown. She collaborated with Gregory Hines, staging and performing in his first choreographic work, Toeing the 3rd and Fifth made for Rhapsody In Taps in 1990. Recognized for her choreographic innovation in tap, she has been awarded five Choreographers’ Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Irvine Fellowships in Dance (1999, 2001) and a 2006 Dance: Creation to Performance grant from the James Irvine Foundation. In 1999 Linda was nominated for the prestigious Alpert Award in Dance. She has received Artist’s Fellowships from the California Arts Council, Arts Council for Long Beach, Public Corporation for the Arts, National Association for Regional Ballet, and California Community Foundation. Ms. Sohl-Ellison received a 1st place choreography award from the Palm Desert Choreography Festival (2003), a Lester Horton Dance Award for Outstanding Choreography from the Dance Resource Center and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Ohio University (2006), a Milestone Award from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for more than 25 years of performances, programs and arts leadership in Los Angeles (2007) and a Tapestry Award from the Soul to Sole tap festival in Austin Texas for 30 years of contributions to the field of tap dance (2010). A full-time Professor of Dance at Orange Coast College since 1978, Linda teaches many dance forms, directs the annual student dance concert and mentors dancers with professional career goals. Her film credits include the movie TAP, and three documentaries: Thinking on their Feet: Women of the Tap Renaissance, You Gotta Move and JUBA. Linda has toured the United States, Asia, France and Germany teaching and performing as a soloist, with Rhapsody In Taps, and with her husband, percussionist Monti Ellison.

2021 - Margaret Morrison is a rhythm tap soloist, choreographer, playwright, and researcher who teaches and performs across the United States, Europe and Brazil. In 2019 she will receive the Flo-Bert Life Achievement Award for her contributions to Tap. Margaret has been called “feather-footed and musically astute” by the New York Times, and has worked for over thirty years in multi-discipline collaborations with percussionists, poets, musicians, and dancers. Her current performance and writing projects explore race, gender, and social meaning in tap dance history. She wrote and starred in her first play, Home In Her Heart, an interracial lesbian love story, directed by Cheryl King. Margaret has toured as a tap soloist to Armenia, Romania, and Moscow, hosted by the US Embassy, has guest lectured at universities, and presents her research on women tap dancers at academic conferences. Dance Research Journal and Los Angeles Review of Books have published her research on tap. Her chapter, “Juanita Pitts: Race, Gender and the Female Hoofer” is forthcoming in the anthology Dancing the African Diaspora, edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz.

Margaret’s performing career began in 1986 when she became a founding member of the American Tap Dance Orchestra, directed by Brenda Bufalino. She toured internationally with the ATDO until 2001 and appeared on the acclaimed PBS-TV Special, Tap Dance in America with Gregory Hines. Margaret also tapped in a national commercial for Seagrams and is a co-creator of Pulsation and Wombapusi, all-women ensembles of tap, percussion, and poetry that performed at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, NYC’s PS 122 and the Nuyorican Poets Café. She frequently performs with her life partner, percussionist Robin Burdulis. Margaret created her first solo tap show in 1997 and in 2002 created “Body of Rhythm,” a collaboration with Jeannie Hill and Max Pollak, for which she was hailed as a "consummate artist who breaks the mold.” Since 2001 she has performed at Tap City, the New York City Tap Festival. Eva Yaa Asantawaa in Dance Magazine called Margaret  “a paragon of exacting control and cool theatricality.”  Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times has called Margaret an “exciting virtuoso dancer," and her choreography "a tour de force" and "the witty highlight of the evening." Margaret’s choreography is performed by professional and youth ensembles around the US and was featured at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. In 2008, she added playwriting and acting to her creative process and has performed her plays at Stage Left Studio, Symphony Space, and other NYC venues.

Margaret is a popular master teacher and has taught at international festivals including Rio’s Tap Encontro and the Chicago Human Rhythm Project. As Education Advisor of the American Tap Dance Foundation she is Co-Director of the Tap Teacher Trainings and coordinates ATDF training programs including Tap City - the New York City Tap Festival. She is a graduate of Barnard College and has taught in the Barnard Dance Department since 1997. Her courses include tap technique, Tap Ensemble, tap composition, and a history course "Tap as an American Art Form."

Margaret was born in Los Angeles. Her early training included ballet with Natalia Clare of Ballet La Jeunesse, and tap and jazz with Dean Barlow in Van Nuys. In her 20s she studied modern dance technique, improvisation, and composition at Barnard College with Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull (Cynthia Novack) and Janet Soares, and took advantage of the wealth of dance training in New York City: modern from June Finch and the Cunningham Studio, Contact Improvisation, clowning, West African dance forms, and percussion. She studied rhythm tap with Brenda Bufalino and all the great masters of the Tap Renaissance, including Jimmy Slyde, Sarah Petronio, Steve Condos, Honi Coles, Buster Brown, Cookie Cook, Lynn Dally, Chuck Green, and Gregory Hines. In 2010 she completed an MFA in Dance from Hollins University/American Dance Festival, working with Thomas F. DeFrantz as her thesis advisor. She has studied acting with Carol Fox Prescott, Alexander Technique with Anne Waxman, voice with Birdey Rutkin, Pilates with Allison Easter, and writing with Cheryl King.

2021 - Baakari Wilder is a young man who has had an astounding career. One of his most noted accomplishments is as Savion Glover's replacement in the Broadway production of "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk." Baakari's career began right here in the DC Metropolitan area. At the age of 12, Baakari opened for tap legends Harold Nicholas, Sandman Sims, and Brenda Bufalino at the Kennedy Center. At 15, he won the Steve Condos Award which granted him a scholarship to one of the first American tap festivals, in Boulder, Colorado. At 18, Baakari did his first tap dance recording for the series "Making The Music," with the legendary Jazz artist Wynton Marsalis.

Baakari has taught and performed not only around the country but also around the world and has acting credentials that include both film and television. His dancing has delighted audiences in places such as the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian, Carnegie Hall, and Jazz @ Lincoln Center. He has shown his versatility as an actor with performances at Folger's Shakespeare Theater and Bowie State University. Baakari has a list of television appearances to his credit, as a dancer (Jazz Central on BET, Savion Glover on BRAVO), an actor (Homicide on NBC), and guest (The Today Show, Rosie O'Donnell, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The 1996 and 1997 Tony Awards). He also appeared as a dancer in Spike Lee's film "Bamboozled."

Baakari studied tap under Savion Glover, Gregory Hines, Jimmy Slyde, Honi Coles, Cholly Atkins, Harold Nicholas, LaVaughn Robinson, Maurice Hines, Brenda Bufalino, Yvonne Edwards, and Renee Kreithen. He was the original dance captain of Tappers With Attitude, and has two pieces of choreography with the company. Since returning to Maryland, Knock On Wood has been extremely fortunate to have him as a faculty member. Baakari also teaches in DC and Virginia.

2022 - DeWitt Fleming Jr. is a world renowned Tap Dancer. He has toured the world as a featured tap dancer with Riverdance, Cirque Du Soliel, danced with Grammy award wining artist Alicia Keys, Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, and was featured on the HBO Emmy Award winning show Boardwalk Empire and America’s Got Talent. New York Times says he is a “non stop source of rhythmic variety and surprise….sparks seem to fly from those shoes!” Dewitt has taught all over the world and has choreographed for numerous productions. Some favorite roles include Daddy Bates in NY City Center’s The Tap Dance Kid, Jelly Roll Morton in the National Black Theater Festival’s production of Jelly’s Last Jam, where he was the tap choreographer as well, Simon in Jesus Christ Superstar, and Ozzie in The Scottsboro Boys. DeWitt also made history by releasing the first jazz album recorded live at Dizzy’s Club Jazz at Lincoln Center with tap dancing; Sax and Taps INTERSPLOSION! (Live at Dizzy’s Club).  In addition to being a performer, DeWitt is the owner of the world’s first and only tap dance microphone company DeW It Right Tap Mics. It is the only company in the world dedicated specifically to creating microphones for tap dancing. For more info about DeWitt please visit www.dewittflemingjr.com social media @dewittflemingjr

2022 - Germaine Salsberg was a child actress in her native Canada performing television and radio. She then became a modern dancer performing and touring throughout Canada, the U.S. and Europe for 10 years with the Toronto Dance Theater. After coming to New York on a study grant - she discovered and fell in love with Tap Dance. She studied with so many people and counts among her mentors, Charles Kelley who gave her teaching strategies, Danny Daniels from whom she satisfied her need to eat up space while dancing rhythmically , and Brenda Bufalino from whom she learned the deep musical value of Tap Dancing. She also discovered that she could teach others and share her love for this amazing dance form. Germaine was on the faculty of Broadway Dance Center from 1984 (yes the year they opened) to 2019 where she taught music theater professionals as well as people who "just love to tap." She has taught for Steps on Broadway, Dance Theater of Harlem, Marymount Manhatten College (Dance Department), Long Island University (Dance Department), Cap 21 (Musical Theater Department), and for almost every major dance organization throughout the US and Canada. She joyfully teaches tap for Vocal Performance majors at NYU’s Steinhardt Music and Performing Arts department /Vocal performance. She assisted Tony Award Winner Danny Daniels for Broadway and National tours of "Tap Dance Kid" and has privately coached many actors including Liza Minnelli for the movie "Steppin Out.” Germaine has choreographed such regional musical theater productions as 42nd Street, Anything Goes, George M!, Crazy For You, and Dames at Sea, performed tap in Edmonton's Fringe Festival with an hour long tap show called Toe Jamm, as well as at Tap City. In New York she and her husband created and produced a yearly Dance event at Brooklyn College. After over 20 years of helping others to find technique and self expression through tap dance, she entered her own journey of self discovery through choreography with her company, Les Femmes. (2008) - a community of women who danced created and grew together. Her company has performed at the 92nd St Y, Symphony Space and the Duke Theater in NYC as part of Tap City and Stampede, Lincoln Center as part of a tribute to Randy Skinner, At the Tap Extravaganza, Boston Tap Festival, Wagner College, the Kumble Theater at LIU, Cedar Crest College PA, Brooklyn College Whitman Theater, and such diverse places as The Friars Club in NYC, street fairs and the Actors Home in New Jersey.

2023 - Terry Brock’s diverse background includes multiple choreographic works and an international performing & teaching career. Her rhythm tap career is long-standing, and she has taught and performed at numerous tap festivals worldwide. She has performed with the San Francisco and Seattle symphonies and has created repertory for the Oregon symphony. Terry was a long-term member of the prestigious Jazz Tap Ensemble under the direction of Lynn Dally – both as a company member and as a guest artist. Terry appeared with leading pioneers of the tap resurgence, Lynn Dally and Brenda Bufalino, and shared the stage with many late, great hoofers, including Gregory Hines, Harold Nicholas, Cholly Atkins, Honi Coles, Steve Condos, Eddie Brown, LaVaughn Robinson, and Arthur Duncan, as well as a host of contemporary tap artists. She continues to perform and create with fellow former JTE member, Sam Weber in a variety of venues and projects. Terry is a Fullbright Arts award recipient, teaching tap in the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, and Poland in conjunction with the US Embassy. She has choreographed and collaborated with Mercer Ellington in a tribute show honoring his father, Duke Ellington. Terry is proud to be the conservator of the late Eleanor Powell’s choreography. Ms. Powell’s son, Peter Ford, has bequeathed to Terry Eleanor’s tap shoes, her handwritten comeback show, her travel trunk and numerous other personal treasures belonging to his late mother. Terry’s early dance/performance career was with the Spiral Starecase, whose solid-gold song, “More Today than Yesterday”, is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. During these years, she kept tap dance visible in every single Las Vegas performance. For over 20 years, Terry was artistic advisor, guest teacher, and choreographer for the Vancouver Tap Society. Her Canadian students were in the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Over the years, her Portland OR students have gone on to Broadway and various dance companies around the world. Terry has staged dinner and musical theater productions, choreographed both the Mrs. America and Mrs. World productions, and worked as the dance and movement coach for the US Olympic Freestyle Ski Team. Throughout all her various career endeavors, tap and rhythm have been her foundation. Terry’s passion to perform, choreograph, and train the next generation thrives. Her hope is that we all continue to keep the beat and for there to be synchronicity worldwide.

2023 - The legendary Reginald McLaughlin aka “Reggio “The Hoofer” is one of the most revered master of tap dancing. For many years, he has provided his art experiences for Chicago’s underserved youth. He has presented programs at schools, libraries, museums, and park facilities that combined performance, historical commentary, and demonstrations, which has earned him a respectful place as a passionate performer and teacher.

In the mid 90’s Reggio met his mentor Ernest “Brownie” Brown, a veteran tap dancer of Vaudeville, Broadway and the Big Band Era. They joined forces and tap together for nearly two decades.

Reggio has been a tap instructor and educator at Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago for more then 25 years. He maintains a vigorous teaching schedule, produces a joyful annual holiday show, “The Nut Tapper” for more then 20 years. and his annual celebration of National Tap Day, Chicago-style for more 15 years.

Reggio “The Hoofer” McLaughlin is an 2021 NEA National Heritage Fellow. This is the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. The recipient of this award is regarded as a Living National Treasure and is presented with the National Medal of Honor. In 2014, McLaughlin received New York City’s prestigious Flo-Bert Award, for his achievements and preservation of the art of tap dancing. In 2015, the Old Town School of Folk Music honored Reggio with its ‘Distinguished Teaching Artist Award’ and also named one of its dance studio in his honor. In 2021 Reggio received three awards from Oklahoma City Tap Fest/Oklahoma Metropolitan School of Dance for Intercity Kids as well as a dance scholarship presented to their students in his name. 2022 Reggio was a recipient of Chicago Department of Special Events and Culture Affairs, Esteemed Artists Award.