Tap festival returns to Brussels
One tap couple is heading a revival of the dynamic American dance form in Brussels
Big tap names like Brenda Bufalino and Tony Waag will perform
The one led by Grégoire Vandermissen, director if the Fred Academy, and his British-born accomplice Sharon Miles. They are heading a dynamic American tap dance revival of which you can discover the full impact during the third Tap Tonight festival.
Irrepressibly enthusiastic, both Vandermissen and Miles (pictured) have just turned 50 but seem at least a decade younger. During the festival, they will be dancing sequences reconstructed from mythical Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers routines.
Alongside them, a whole host of other artists from the higher echelons of the international tap fraternity have been invited to perform, including America’s Grande Dame of the tap renaissance, Brenda Bufalino, and the pioneering New Yorker Tony Waag. Swiss artists Costel Surbeck and Fabrice Martin are here, too, with the latter's international champion pupil Daniel Leveillé, who will surely bewitch audiences with his mix of eye-popping technique and tousled nonchalance.
If you’re quick, you can also sign up for one of the initiation or master tap classes to be led on the two days prior to the festival by some of the eminent artists on the bill. Tap shoe hire is included in the price.
Entirely unsubsidised and born out of Vandermissen’s passion and sheer hard work, the festival is a brave and worthy initiative, not least because tap is a dance form so infectiously joyful and geared to delight a wide audience that it deserves a life beyond the competition circuits to where, it seems, many great artists are still confined.
23 Feb, 15.00-19.00 │ Bozar, Brussels
www.bozar.be
