top of page

NEWS

Let's Tap!

February 22, 2025

Published by DSOB

Tap dance and jazz swing music is like chocolate and strawberries. They taste good separately, but they are delicious together! Though tap dance, an indigenous American dance genre, developed over a period of three hundred years, jazz tap dance did not start to appear until the early decades of the twentieth century. Constance Valis Hill states in her book Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History, “It was around that time that jazz tap dance developed as a musical form parallel to jazz music, sharing rhythmic motifs, polyrhythm, multiple meters, elements of swing, and structured improvisation.” Big Bands like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong, to name a few, rose to prominence at this time and many of these bands employed a contracted featured tap dancer. The drummers of these big bands were known to imitate the intricate rhythms of the tap dancers. Big bands are still thriving today. Join us as we celebrate BIG BANDS FROM THEN AND NOW directed and choreographed by Kyme Hersi-Sallid and performed by the Rhythm Keepers and Junior Rhythm Keepers tap companies, along with the Apprentice Rhythm Keepers. Guest artists, The Rug Cutters teen swing dancers, directed by Eliza Reese and Danny Iktomi Bevins, will thrill you as well. Join us on March 29th and 30th for the delicious rhythms of these combined art forms. Don’t forget to bring your tap shoes to join us on stage for the Shim Sham. Let’s Tap! 


Tickets go on sale March 3 (general admission): adults $20, students (18 & under) $10.


Image-empty-state.png
bottom of page