Published on August 1st 2018 by Hillary-Marie
My Favorite Podcasts (1:11)
My Journey in the Dance (1:38)
I started tap dancing at the age of twelve. It never came easy to me but I absolutely loved it so I worked hard and practiced harder. To this day, I never overlook someone who isn’t a great dancer now because I was a terrible dancer and I know what the struggle to learn is like. As a result, in every student, I see an amazing opportunity to grow and reach for the next level in this dance.
I started Jersey Tap Fest as a teenager, an annual summer tap dance festival in New Jersey. After graduating from high school I studied Pan-Africanism at Drew University for a year and then I transferred to Fairleigh Dickinson University and studied entrepreneurship for a semester. I then dropped out of college and moved to NYY and lived there for 6 years performing in tap dance companies.
While living in NYC, my studio partner and I started Grooves Unlimited Dance Studio, a niche dance studio hyper-focused in Hip-Hop and Tap dance education located in Livingston, New Jersey, USA. In residency at the studio, I am the director of my pre-professional company, FutureSTEP Tap Company, a non-competitive audition-based tap dance company for dancers ages 10-25 that performances with live music at dance festivals, jazz clubs, children’s hospitals and other public venues.
I also have a company called Hillary-Marie’s Sole Music Collective, which is home to performance based projects, including my touring shows and Herspective video series.
Most recently, I’ve started iTapOnline.com, an online source for tap dance education that hosts a library of my teaching exercises, breakdowns of historical choreography, and music theory exercises. It also serves as an online community for tap dancers around the world to come together and share their passion for the dance as well as their thoughts and questions as students, teachers and enthusiasts.
What I Hope to Share (5:17)
In future episodes, it’s my plan to share my experiences, successes, failures and lessons I’ve learned along my dance journey in hopes that it will help someone along theirs. Topics will include producing, directing, marketing, content creation, teaching approaches, learning methods, philosophies of the dance, the history of tap dance, work-life balance, outsourcing, people-management and much more.
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Click here to subscribe to the podcast and visit www.iTapOnline.com for more content, including blog posts, tap dance tutorials, my free rhythm training for tap dancers video series and much more. After subscribing, you’ll receive an invitation to join our facebook community.
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