The third iteration of the Toronto International Tap Dance Festival returns for 2024 with a program that spotlights Canadian talent in the genre, along with live music accompaniment. Workshops, shows, and free jams each night add to the ways you can experience this art form during the festival from August 15 to 18.
Produced by Toffan Rhythm Projects, the theme for the 2024 festival is duality, embodied in the idea of two legacies, two commissions — even two percussionists.
We spoke to dancer/choreographer Travis Knights about the festival, where he’s curated both the opening and closing events.
Dancer/choreographer Travis Knights
Tap dancer, choreographer and speaker Travis Knights has been a fixture in the tap dance world for more than two decades. He’s been pounding the rhythms out on stages from Shanghai to Dusseldorf since 2000, when he snagged the role of a principal dancer in the biopic Bojangles, starring Gregory Hines and Savion Glover.
Other career milestones include performing as the principal dancer in the video game adaptation of the hit movie Happy Feet in 2006, consulting with Cirque du Soleil, performing at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Vancouver in 2010, and touring North America with the Australian company Tap Dogs. He spent three years as a principal dancer with Tapestry Dance Company in Austin, Texas, and won a Dora Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance Immersions Tap Legacy Concert.
Travis also hosts The Tap Love Tour Podcast.
Tap Dance In The 21st Century
For this year, and after sold out shows in 2023, the festival has expanded from three days of programming to four.
“Every year, the event and the interest for tap dance is getting bigger and bigger,” Travis says. Tap dance has something of the same reputation as that of classical music, in some respects. Every year, there seems to be stories of both doom and resurrection.
“For over 30 years, I’ve been hearing that tap dance is coming back,” he laughs. “It’s either that or tap dance is dying.”
As a point of observation, he says witnessed a definite upward trajectory when it comes to interest in the genre. Dancing with the Stars and similar shows have also popularized contemporary dance.
He’s also been following the Paris Olympics, and its new category of breaking, with interest. “I’m very invested in what’s happening now in Paris.” He mentions the link between Olympics and patriotism. “I mention that because this year, […] break dance is being featured,” he says. It’s easy to see a superficial appeal. “There’s a faction of people that enjoy virtuosity.”
A singular focus on that aspect, however, strays from the genre’s roots developing alongside hip-hop music. “It’s none of my business when dance turns into sport.”
He is concerned about the narratives directions that an art form may take. “As a culture maker, I feel like my responsibility is the way to bring people together,” he says. Sheer athleticism isn’t really about community, in other words.
The same thinking applies to tap. “Tap dance is born in a specific era where African Americans are discovering ourselves and each other.”
Tap dance originated in the US in the early 19th century, during a time when African slaves were denied access to their traditional instruments and drums. They took to a percussive style of dancing instead, one that blended their own roots, often in West Africa, with the Irish traditions carried through to American society. The syncopated percussions of their own traditional music came out in their feet.
Tap dance gained in popularity alongside jazz music during the famous Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. “There’s a kind of joy. There is this need, a worldwide need to express ourselves and be ourselves,” Travis says.
That aspect, however, has come to be somewhat controversial. “Tap dance is one of these forms that I’d argue is the most misunderstood.” It is linked by some people, particularly older generations, to the minstrel shows and pandering to the masters.
“I was raised to turn away from legends like Bill Bojangles Robinson,” he relates, calling it “a weird struggle in my world”. Non-Black dancers, without that generational baggage, can simply enjoy the steps and the movement, but they aren’t necessarily connected to the context.
The Toronto International Tap Dance Festival
“I’m proud to be at the helm of two of these shows,” he says of the opening and closing events. The festival will bring noted elders of the tap dance world together with up and comers.
The Festival opens with a 2021 film project produced by Luminato and curated by Knights. Dora nominated tap dance Johnathan Morin is of Cree descent, and the film Restorative Culture kicks off the festival with his story into tap dance and culture. After the screening and a Q&A, Johnathan Morin and a live jazz trio will perform a short set.
Raised in foster care, Johnathan was disconnected from his own heritage. Tap dance gave him a vibrant culture to lean into. As he acknowledges in the film, he knows a great deal about an African American dance form, yet little to nothing of his own culture.
Keeping traditions alive, and seeing their passage into the future, is important work, particularly for art forms that have significant meaning. “We run the risk of pouring our attention in a monoculture that doesn’t mean anything,” Travis says.
A portion of the Opening Night’s proceeds goes to Maskwacis Cultural College, an Indigenous organization chosen by Johnathan.
The closing event honours a Canadian tap legend. Travis and spouse Tanya have curated the closing night show titled Rhythm Lives: Honouring the Legacy of Ethel Bruneau (1936-2023) on August 18. It’s a story that’s very close to their hearts.
“I married an Ethel Bruneau dancer,” Travis laughs.
After growing up in Harlem, NY, Ethel Bruneau was a professional dancer in her teens. She was building her reputation working on The Ed Sullivan Show and other major TV shows of the era. While on tour with legendary artist Cab Calloway in 1953, she moved to Montreal for good at the tender age of 17.
Ethel went on to take the burgeoning Montreal night club scene by storm, and was a tap dancing icon during the 1950s at places like Rockhead’s Paradise, the Black Bottom, and the Cavendish Club.
She became known by many as The Tap Queen of Montreal.
She would go on to teach many of Canada’s leading tap dancers. Travis met wife Tanya met while they were both studying with Ethel, who went on to mentor the two.
“Ethel Bruneau taught me how to tap dance, but she also taught me the history,” he notes. That includes her early life in Harlem, when she’d bring Bill Bojangles Robinson his dinners, and met other icons of the era. She’d tell him “You are my disciples in this dance.”
Bruneau was 87 when she died in July 2023.
Rhythm Lives: Honouring the Legacy of Ethel Bruneau features members of the Bruneau family, along with young local dancers, and members of the tap community in a celebration of her life and legacy.
“It’s not a sport,” he says of tap. “It has the ability to be art, but my approach is much more spiritually based. It’s beyond show business. It’s about community and connection with lineage.”
That’s what lies at the heart of the tribute to Bruneau.
TITDF: The Festival
Also In The Lineup
On August 16, the Genesis ticket features performances tap pioneer Brenda Bufalino, and new commissions from choreographers Ryan Foley and Victoria Miller. Bufalino was an iconic figure in the tap renaissance of the 1970s, and toured with groups like the Copasetics, Gregory Hines, and the Nicholas Brothers. Along with her work as a dancer and choreographer, she’s a poet, author and vocalist.
Veteran choreographer Ryan Foley will be collaborating with his daughter, contemporary dancer Madison Foley, and composer Nathan Hiltz. An ensemble of dancers will explore the music of the Soulquarians in collaboration with pianist Darryl Joseph-Dennie in Victoria Miller’s piece.
On August 17, the Convergence program features a double bill of Danny Nielsen’s In Conversation and Michela Marino Lerman’s band Love Movement. Danny Nielsen is a respected as an artist around the world.
“Danny Nielsen, in my opinion, is the finest tap dancer in Canada,” Travis notes.
Danny will be collaborating with Bulgarian pianist/percussionist Kristian Alexandrov, exploring the tight connection between tap dance and jazz piano. The piece will be set to original music along with old standards. Matthew Shields directs.
Tap dancer and bandleader Michela Marino Lerman studied with Buster Brown, Gregory Hines, and other icons. She has led her band at the Lincoln Center, and other notable NY venues, and conceived, co-created, choreographed, and starred in the show This Joint is Jumpin, which debuted in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s London West End Theater in 2017.
Along with an opening night party, there will also be dance jams nightly from with host Veronica Simpson and local musicians.
Art is about inspiration, and in troubled times, it’s needed more than ever. When desperation makes imaginations fail, it’s up to artists to step into the breach.
“The responsibility of the artist is to inspire another way forward.”
Performances take place at Harbourfront Centre. Find out more about TITDF, and tickets, [HERE].
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