The American Tap Dance Foundation (ATDF)’s Tap Dance Awards will be presented July 8, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space in NYC. The Awards ceremony will honor winners of this year’s ATDF Hoofer and Tap Preservation awards, and induct new members into the Tap Dance Hall of Fame. The production will also include TAP FUTURE performances showing newly minted work from “Tap into Your Story,” a highlight of the Tap City 2022 Residencies. Film clips, surprise guests and performances honoring this year’s awardees will complete the evening. The ATDF Tap Awards and Tap Future are featured events of Tap City, the NYC Tap Festival, returning July 4-10, for its 22nd year.
Winners of this year’s ATDF Hoofer Award are DeWitt Fleming Jr. and Germaine Salsberg, in recognition of their inspiration to future generations and contributions to the art form. The 2022 Tap Preservation Award will be given to Yvonne Edwards for her role in advancing tap dance through presentation and preservation. The late Leonard Harper, Pete Nugent, Eddie Rector, and Salt and Pepper are this year’s inductees into the ATDF Tap Dance Hall of Fame, the only Tap Dance Hall of Fame focused exclusively on 20th and 21st century professional tap dancers. With its collection of photographs, biographies and videos, the ATDF Hall of Fame is a colorful and diverse retrospective of America’s seminal tap dance personalities.
Tap Future’s “Tap Into Your Story” is a work incorporating dancers’ individual experiences with the Covid pandemic. The ATDF team has explored and extracted material from dancer’s personal journeys and stories. Tony Waag, ATDF executive director, is working with four choreographers, a psychotherapist, a poet and live musicians in this choreographic journey. Pre-festival Zooms are included in the performance, with participants on stage also represented on film. The poet will take dancer experiences and create a narrative poem that is recited over the dance. Tap Into Your Story will be a comment on the last two-and-a-half years being confined to Zoom, and being isolated and dealing with Covid.
ATDF’s Tap Awards and ‘Tap Future’ performances will take place on July 8, at 8pm, at NYC’s Symphony Space. For tickets, visit www.symphonyspace.org/events/vp-tap-future-2.
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