At the 2002 Tony Awards, Savion Glover stepped onto a bare stage with nothing but a wooden platform and a pair of tap shoes. For four unaccompanied minutes, he detonated a rhythmic assault so intricate that the orchestra pit fell silent, unsure when to cue the next presenter. That moment—tap reclaimed as solo concert art, not Broadway backup—announced what the 21st century would bring: a revolution in how we watch, create, and preserve this American form.
Three distinct shifts have shaped tap since 2000. First, choreographic authorship: dancers now claim director credit, not just performer billing. Second, institutional legitimacy: tap holds residencies at venues once reserved for ballet and modern dance. Third, global hybridity: the form absorbs flamenco, Afro-Cuban, and electronic influences while maintaining its jazz core. The five works below embody these transformations—and unlike most "must-see" lists, this one tells you where to actually find them.
The Institution-Builder: Michelle Dorrance's The Blues Project (2013)
Dorrance treats the floor as a percussion instrument in its own right. In The Blues Project, her company trades phrases with a live blues band—Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely—dissolving the boundary between dancer and musician. The work respects tap's juke-joint roots while executing formations precise enough for a Balanchine ballet master.
What distinguishes Dorrance is architectural thinking. She builds rhythmic structures that accumulate across twenty-minute sections, then deconstructs them before your ears. The 2015 Joyce Theater run was professionally filmed; excerpts circulate on Dorrance Dance's YouTube channel, and full documentation exists in the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division.
Viewing note: Dorrance restages sections of this work frequently. Check her company's tour schedule—The Blues Project or its successor, ETM: Double Down (2016), appear annually at major venues.
The Archivist: Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards's Tribute: The House of Tap (2018)
Sumbry-Edwards occupies a unique position: trained by the last generation of Black tap masters (including her mentor, Gregory Hines), she now safeguards their repertory while advancing her own voice. Tribute is not nostalgia. It is argument—a demonstration that tap history lives in muscle memory, not museum cases.
The work structures itself as a house party: Sumbry-Edwards welcomes audiences into a simulated living room where Buck and Wing, rhythm tap, and flash styles coexist. She performs solos associated with Eleanor Powell and the Nicholas Brothers, then interrupts them with her own improvisations—commentary and continuation simultaneously.
No commercial recording exists. However, Sumbry-Edwards teaches repertory from this show at the annual Chicago Human Rhythm Project festival, where students can access the material directly. For viewers, her 2019 performance at the Kennedy Center's Ballet Across America (streamed on their website) offers the closest approximation.
The Hybridist: Ayodele Casel's Chica Chica Boom Chic (2019)
Casel's breakthrough work fuses tap with flamenco zapateado and Afro-Cuban orisha movement—forms that share African rhythmic DNA but diverged through colonial history. The result is not collage but synthesis: her feet articulate three distinct dance languages while her upper body maintains flamenco's proud carriage.
Chica Chica Boom Chic emerged from Casel's research into her own Puerto Rican heritage, and the work carries that personal archaeology visibly. She performs in heels for flamenco sections, switches to tap shoes, then dances barefoot for Yoruba-derived sequences. The transitions are audible—the floor itself records the shift.
The work premiered at the Vail Dance Festival; professional documentation exists through their archive. Casel also adapted sections for Sesame Street (2021), introducing hybrid tap to a generation of children—a strategic choice that recognizes where 21st-century dance preservation now occurs.
The Broadway Integrator: Jason Samuels Smith in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
Samuels Smith's reputation rests on explosive athleticism, but his most influential 21st-century appearance was not on stage. In McG's Charlie's Angels sequel, he performs a ninety-second tap battle against Bernie Mac—a sequence that inserted complex tap into mainstream action cinema without explanatory dialogue.
The choice matters. Where Bring in 'da Noise required audiences to enter a theater prepared for tap, Samuels Smith's film work smuggled the form into spaces where viewers had not opted in. His subsequent Broadway credit, Catch Me If You Can (
