Manhattan Tap Information

Manhattan Tap, "one of New York's leading tap ensembles" NY Times, was founded in 1986, and is a major force not only in NYC but also in the international tap community. The company is a collection of individual dancers, all strong soloists, who fuse into an electrifying ensemble that uniquely blends tap dance, music, choreography and improvisation. Since 1991 Artistic Director Heather Cornell has been the sole choreogrhapher creating works in a style that has been dubbed "visual music" by Dance Magazine. "Manhattan Tap concentrates on what counts - the sound of tap dancing... excitingly they are always in dialogue with their own musicians... " NY Times. And what musicians they are! With a home base like Manhattan, the company has worked with some of the greatest jazz and world musicians. A long-standing collaborative relationship between Ms. Cornell and renowned bassist Ray Brown peaked with the world premiere of The Tap Suite , a twenty-minute work with original music by Ray Brown. The Tap Suite was performed with the Ray Brown Trio at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in 1997 for Manhattan Tap's tenth anniversary season, Tap Meets Brown in Manhattan. In 1992 Manhattan Tap was awarded a Meet The Composers' National Composer/Choreographer Grant which funded the first collaboration between Ms. Cornell and Ray Brown and resulted in Gumbo Hump. In June 1998, Ms. Cornell collaborated with body percussionist and world musician Keith Terry and Crosspulse, on Excursion Fare, a new work that was again funded by a Meet the Composer grant and premiered at New York City's Joyce Theater. Also that year, the company completed an extensive residency in Connecticut that included a collaboration between Ms. Cornell and percussionist Leon Parker. "(Heather Cornell, in Excursion Fare) bridges the gap between old and new style tap dancing, with dancing as intimately involved with the music as any tap solost and instrumentalist.