When Emily Martinez took the helm of the Somerset City Tap Ensemble in 2019, enrollment was scraping 45 students. Last month, her waitlist hit 80. That surge is not an anomaly. Across this city of 11,000, roughly 30 miles south of Columbus, tap is experiencing a genuine resurgence—one that arts educators across the Midwest are beginning to notice.
For years, Ohio's dance reputation rested on ballet in Cleveland, contemporary in Cincinnati, and collegiate programs in Columbus. Tap occupied a smaller stage. Now, fueled by pandemic-era creative Pivoting and a wave of young educators returning to smaller markets, Somerset City has become an unlikely hub. Three institutions drive that momentum: a decade-old neighborhood studio blending Broadway pedigree with adaptive teaching, a tech-forward choreographic laboratory drawing statewide talent, and a nonprofit ensemble that has quadrupled its scholarship fund in four years.
Here is how each is reshaping what tap looks like in Ohio—and why dancers are driving hours to study here.
Rhythm & Sole Dance Studio: Broadway Precision, Small-Town Access
On a Tuesday evening in Rhythm & Sole's storefront studio on Main Street, twelve beginners ages six to sixty-four line up at ballet barres converted into tap rails. Sarah Thompson, the studio's founder, claps a slow 4/4 beat. "Heel-drop, shuffle, ball-change," she calls out. "I need to hear you, not the floor." A retired accountant and a fifth-grader miss the same step; Thompson pauses, demonstrates the weight shift, and both nail it on the second try.
This is Thompson's deliberate formula. After ten years running Rhythm & Sole, she still structures every beginner class around the call-and-response exercises she learned while understudying Andy Lee in the 2006–2008 North American tour of 42nd Street. Advanced students work through her "Cross-Train" curriculum, which pairs traditional Broadway-style tap with contemporary hoofing influenced by Jason Samuels Smith and Michelle Dorrance—artists Thompson has brought in for annual masterclasses since 2019.
The results have started to show up on collegiate rosters and professional credits. Maya Okonkwo, 22, trained at Rhythm & Sole from ages eight to seventeen and is now in her second year with Chicago Tap Theatre. Darnell Reese, 19, enrolled at Thompson's studio at fourteen after moving from Cleveland; he recently became the first Somerset City dancer accepted to The School at Jacob's Pillow tap program. Thompson keeps a running board of alumni placements in the studio lobby. It currently lists fourteen graduates in professional or pre-professional programs nationwide.
Enrollment tells its own story. Rhythm & Sole operated out of a 900-square-foot space until 2022, when Thompson leased a second, 2,400-square-foot location on the city's east side. Combined weekly enrollment now sits at 340 students, up from 190 in 2019.
"What Sarah figured out is that technical rigor doesn't require an urban address," said Dr. Karen Wu, an Ohio State dance historian who has tracked regional enrollment trends. "She's exporting talent to New York and Chicago while keeping the front door genuinely affordable."
The Tap Lab: Where Tap Meets Projection Mapping and Live Coding
If Rhythm & Sole represents preservation with a modern edge, The Tap Lab operates as a deliberate rupture. Housed in a converted textile mill on the edge of downtown, the studio is easy to miss—until you step inside the 4,000-square-foot Performance Lab, where motion-capture sensors hang above sprung maple floors and a 32-foot LED wall dominates one end of the room.
Founder Michael Johnson, 38, built The Tap Lab in 2017 after eight years as a rehearsal director and associate choreographer for STOMP's international tours, followed by freelance work with Savion Glover and Dorrance Dance. His premise was simple: tap is acoustic percussion, and percussion can interface with any technology built to receive sound.
Students at The Tap Lab learn traditional technique, but advanced coursework includes interactive media design, loop-station composition, and collaborative scoring with live-coding musicians. Johnson's flagship student ensemble, The Riff Project, performs original works in which dancers trigger video projections, manipulate real-time lighting, and improvise against algorithmically generated beats. The group's annual showcase, also called The Riff Project, sold out Somerset City's 400-seat Grand Theater in 2023 and 2024; a third edition is scheduled for March 2025 with tickets priced at $18–$35.
The Lab's pull extends well beyond Somerset City. Johnson estimates that roughly 40 percent of his 120 enrolled students commute from Columbus, Dayton, or Cincinnati. One of them, Leah Park, 24
