May 10, 2024
In Vermont's small-town studios and village squares, tap shoes are striking a new beat. Studio enrollment has climbed steadily over the past five years, and a new generation of dancers is discovering the form through programs that merge traditional footwork with electronic soundscapes, social outreach, and community performance.
A Measurable Resurgence
The revival is not merely anecdotal. According to the Vermont Dance Alliance, tap enrollment at member studios has risen roughly 40% since 2019—a notable jump in a state of just 645,000 residents. While New York and Chicago remain the dominant professional hubs, Vermont has developed a reputation as an incubator for experimental, community-rooted tap.
The Tap Renaissance Initiative, a collective of seven dance studios and independent educators founded in 2021, has driven much of this growth. Based in Montpelier and Burlington, with satellite programs in Brattleboro and Middlebury, the group set out to update tap pedagogy for dancers raised on smartphones and streaming playlists.
"We were losing teenagers to hip-hop and contemporary," said Mara Ellison, a Burlington-based instructor who helped launch the initiative. "Once we started pairing tap with music they actually listened to—and gave them some control over the sound—they started showing up and staying."
Wearable Tech Meets Traditional Rhythm
The initiative's most talked-about program, TapTech, outfits standard tap shoes with pressure and motion sensors that trigger digital audio effects in real time. A hard shuffle might launch a pre-programmed drum loop; a soft heel drop could layer in a synthesizer pad. Dancers work with a composer-technician to build custom "sound maps" for each routine, deciding which steps activate which samples.
The result is neither fully improvised nor strictly composed. In performance, the dancer's footwork becomes a live instrument played against backing tracks and ambient electronics.
"It took me months to stop thinking of the shoes as a gimmick," said Jalen Okonkwo, 19, a TapTech student who began dancing two years ago. "Now it feels like I'm conducting and dancing at the same time. The challenge is still your clarity, your timing—just with more moving parts."
Not everyone in Vermont's tap community is convinced. Dorothea Vance, a Middlebury instructor who studied with the late tap master Dianne Walker, said she worries that amplified effects can mask sloppy technique.
"When the room is full of reverb and bass, you can lose the naked sound of the shoe," Vance said. "That sound is the art form. I support experimentation, but I remind my students that if you can't hear your own rhythm without the electronics, you haven't mastered the step."
From Studio to Street
Beyond performance, tap has become a social outreach tool. Tap for All, a Burlington-based grassroots group, runs free, drop-in workshops in public spaces: the Church Street Marketplace, the Montpelier Farmers Market, and the Morrisville skate park. The events typically draw 10 to 30 participants, from toddlers to retirees.
Organizer Luisa Fernández, a former professional dancer who moved to Vermont in 2020, said the goal is not recruitment but connection.
"We don't hand out studio flyers," Fernández said. "We set down a portable floor, start making noise, and see who wants to try. Last fall in Morrisville, a guy in steel-toe boots stomped out a rhythm with us for twenty minutes. He said he'd never been inside a dance studio in his life."
A Hub in the Making
The Tap Renaissance Initiative is now fundraising for a dedicated tap center in Burlington's South End Arts District. If fully funded, the 6,000-square-foot facility would include two sprung-floor studios, a 120-seat performance space, and a research lab for dance-technology collaboration. Organizers say they have secured roughly half of the $2.4 million goal and hope to break ground in 2026.
"We're not trying to compete with the major cities," Ellison said. "We want a place where a farmer's kid from the Northeast Kingdom can experiment with sensors and composition alongside someone who's been tapping for forty years. That's the version of 'hub' that makes sense for Vermont."
Whether the center is built or not, the state's tap community shows little sign of slowing. In a region better known for maple syrup and maple hardwood floors, the sound of metal on wood has become something else entirely: a contested, collaborative, and unmistakably contemporary art form.
