Tap Dance
A Continually Unfolding Love Affair with Tap Dance
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After 20 years of formal and informal dance training, Stefanie discovered her specific passion for the American vernacular art form of Rhythm and Jazz Tap dance in 1997 at Indiana University in Bloomington with Allana Radecki. She went on that same year to become a scholarship student at the professional training school at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, MA. In the Jazz Traditions Program she studied intensively with award-winning artistic directors Danny Buraczeski (Jazz Dance), Billy Siegenfeld (Jump Rhythm Jazz), Vicki Adams Willis (Calgary’s Decidedly Jazz Danceworks), and tap master Lane Alexander (Chicago Human Rhythm Project).
On her way out west Stefanie was cut short when learning that tap legends Dianne “Lady Di” Walker and Jimmy Slyde would be leading a year-long Jazz Tap residency based out of her birth-town of Pittsfield, MA. She remained East, blossoming where she was planted, becoming initiated into a clan of keepers that were giving their bodies and souls to keeping the Dance alive. Receiving a lively mentorship with Dianne Walker and having secrets of the shuffle whispered in her ears via jazz clubs with Jimmy Slyde, Stefanie stepped up to the plate to co-lead for five years an organization based solely on the vibrancy of Jazz Tap. T.A.P.- Totally Artistic Percussion was born in 1998 as a teaching and performing group dedicated to outreach. According to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s education direction J.R. Glover, Stefanie along with partners Stefan Harris and Sherry Haines-Salerno, succeeded in bringing, “the awareness and love for Jazz Tap in Berkshire County to greater heights than ever imagined.”
(to be continued…)