There are many tap dance festivals around the world, timed throughout the year to avoid overlap. The Boston Tap Party, the area’s only such gathering, is smaller and shorter than many, but mighty, and dancers and instructors from as far as Wyoming, Chicago and Korea came to Somerville’s Deborah Mason Performing Arts Center last weekend for its sixth annual celebration.
Instructor Josh Hilberman came from the Ghent Tap Festival in Belgium, where he lives and teaches at the The Claquettes Club in Liège.
Nico Rubio and Luke Hickey arrived fresh from the July 20-26 Luthier Tap Festival in Barcelona, Spain, where the pair taught and took classes, so Rubio could present Thursday through Sunday in Somerville.
“We’re blessed that tap takes us around the world and around the country, and Boston has such a rich tap history,” Rubio said. “It’s a blessing and an honor to be a part of this art form in any way.”
The Beantown Tap Fest was established in 2010 by Julia Boynton “to bring some kind of celebration” of the form, Boynton said. “The community took to it,” and the fest ran for a decade under her leadership.
Upon retiring in 2020, she handed off the festival to Deborah Mason Dudley, who administered the Beantown Tap Fest’s youth program so Boynton could keep her focus on older dancers. “She said, ‘We can’t let this stop.’ She was right,” Boynton said. “I’m so glad Deborah took it over.”
Dudley rebranded it as the “Boston Tap Party” (a play on the Boston Tea Party suggested by the public and selected by popular vote), shortened a weeklong event to four days and eliminated the age divisions.
Amateur and leisure dancers join aspiring and working professionals among the mix for a common love of syncopated movement.
“Tap is not just about tricks, it’s about musicality and jazz and expression,” said Rachel Gain, 31, attending her third Boston Tap Party. “It’s so satisfying to be able to make rhythm with your feet and compose a whole musical idea.”
Gain lives in New Haven and studies music theory at Yale. She is writing her dissertation on tap and its technique and musicality, especially in serious instruction, Gain said.
The intimate sizing of the Somerville festival – classes are capped at 30 students – allow for more individualized attention and makes it more community-oriented, instructors said. “Bringing all these artists in to share their work with the community, that’s important,” Dudley said. “They come because they want to be a part of it. So to take class with them, it’s pretty special.”
Hilberman offered an intermediate “residency” class for the duration of the festival in which students completed a routine by adding steps to choreography learned the day before. The class finished and performed the full piece for Hilberman on Sunday.
The festival culminated in a multihour showcase by the A-list faculty, instructors renowned around the world such as Jeffrey Bird, Elizabeth Burke, Sydney Burtis, Kelly Kaleta, Anthony Morigerato, Demi Remick and Sarah Reich in addition to Hickey, Hilberman and Rubio.
Remick and Burtis performed as a duo, bringing a Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor level of energy and joy. Rubio provided a rhythmic treat with quick steps and repeating rhythms set to a jazz backdrop, sprinkled with impressive tricks and personality points.
After the showcase, Dudley held a tap “jam,” an intimate, open-mic style gathering for students to showcase their skills.
Giana Pascucci, originally from Loveland, Colorado, is a rising sophomore at the University of Wyoming studying dance and with ambitions to become a dance instructor. She secured funding through her college to attend her first Boston Tap Party.
“It’s really great just to be around a lot of other people who really enjoy tap. Sometimes I feel like, especially where I come from, tap isn’t as big of a thing,” Pascucci said of her experience. “The energy [here] just feels so alive. I feel like we’re all challenging and pushing each other.”
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