Posted on May 10, 2024
Bloomfield City has always prided itself on artistic expression, but walk down Mercer Avenue on a Tuesday evening and you'll hear something unexpected: the precise, metallic thunder of tap shoes striking maple floors, spilling out of converted warehouses and second-story studios that sat dark just five years ago.
Since 2020, four dedicated tap studios have opened here, joining the city's two longtime schools. The result is a genuine resurgence—not of nostalgia, but of new practitioners, new audiences, and a redefined sense of what percussive dance can mean in a post-pandemic city.
From Empty Storefronts to Sold-Out Studios
The boom has concrete roots. In 2021, Bloomfield City's cultural department redirected $340,000 in recovered performance-venue grants toward dance infrastructure, using the funds to subsidize sprung-floor installations and rent stabilization for independent studios. That decision, championed by cultural commissioner Denise Okonkwo, transformed what had been a scattered scene into something coordinated and sustainable.
"The pandemic killed our theaters," Okonkwo says. "We asked what art form could survive—and even thrive—in smaller spaces, with physical distance, without enormous production costs. Tap answered every requirement."
The investment paid off quickly. The Bloomfield Tap House, which opened in a former print shop on Willow Street in 2022, now runs 17 weekly classes and maintains a waitlist for its adult beginner program. Its floors—engineered specifically for percussive dance, with a dual-density foam suspension system—represent a level of physical infrastructure that veteran instructors say was unavailable locally a decade ago.
But equipment alone doesn't explain the crowds.
Who's Showing Up—and Why
At the Bloomfield Tap House, the 10 a.m. Saturday beginner class draws a cross-section that would be improbable almost anywhere else: retirees returning to childhood lessons, software engineers seeking screen-time antidotes, and parents who discovered the studio through TikTok accounts like @TinyTapsBloomfield, which documents student progress and has racked up 2.3 million views since 2022.
Eleanor Voss, 67, a retired accountant, enrolled in January after decades away from dance. "I'd done ballet as a girl, but I wanted something that felt mathematical and musical at the same time," she says. "The first time I executed a clean time step, I heard it before I saw it. That's the addiction."
Eight-year-old Marcus Chen, two rows over, arrived through a different path entirely. His mother, software developer Lena Chen, found a clip of Bloomfield Tap House artistic director Jordan Reeves choreographing to a remix of a Kendrick Lamar track. "I didn't know tap could sound like that," she says. "Marcus watched it forty times and asked if he could make music with his feet."
Reeves, 34, a former ensemble member of the national tour of 42nd Street, left New York for Bloomfield City in 2021 after pandemic layoffs. The studio's curriculum reflects his hybrid background: classes move between classic Broadway vocabulary, rhythm tap rooted in Black American tradition, and contemporary fusions that draw on hip-hop and electronic music.
"The floor doesn't lie," Reeves says. "You can hide bad technique in ballet. In tap, we hear everything. That honesty terrifies people at first, and then it becomes the whole reason they stay."
Masterclasses and Measurable Growth
The studios have also become a destination for working professionals. In March, Broadway veteran Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards led a sold-out three-day masterclass at Metro Rhythm Studio, one of the city's original schools. In August, Jason Samuels Smith will conduct a two-week residency at the Tap House. These are not ceremonial appearances; they represent a recognition that Bloomfield City has developed enough technical depth to attract instructors who typically restrict themselves to New York, Los Angeles, or international festival circuits.
The city's annual Bloomfield Tap Festival has grown in parallel. An estimated 4,200 attendees came through last June's event, up from 1,800 in 2019. The festival now includes not only performances and competitions but also a showcase where local dancers audition directly for casting directors and conservatory recruiters. Two Bloomfield-trained teenagers have received full scholarships to the School at Jacob's Pillow in the past three years.
The Sound of a City Changing
What tap has provided Bloomfield City may be larger than any festival attendance figure suggests. In a city whose post-industrial economy has struggled to define a coherent cultural identity, the tap studios have created unexpected intersections: between age groups, between technical traditions, between digital discovery and analog practice.
"The rhythm becomes public here," says Okonkwo. "You hear it through open windows, in lobby waiting areas, on sidewalk videos. It's not confined to a proscenium stage. It's part of the city's
