Interview with Kat and Katie
Of Lady Hoofers Tap Ensemble
1. What is the name of your company?
The Lady Hoofers Tap Ensemble
2. How many years has your company existed?
Founded in September 2011, we are currently in our ninth season.
3. Where is your company based?
Philadelphia
4. What are the age range of the dancers in your company?
Our First Company and Apprentice dancers are generally in their 20s and 30s. Our Youth Ensemble is comprised of pre-professional dancers ages 10-18.
5. How often do your dancers meet to rehearse? Perform?
Like most artists in the gig economy, our dancers juggle performing, teaching, and a wide variety of “day jobs.” And our Youth Ensemble dancers are busy with school, dance classes, and other activities during the week. As such, we rehearse together every weekend with additional sessions as needed, plus lots and lots of “remote” rehearsal sessions with the help of technology!
We produce two mainstage concerts each year: THE TAPCRACKER in December, our original, all-tap, all-women version of the holiday classic, and ON TAP, our spring concert, which features new choreography, guest choreographer commissions, and improvisation by our dancers. We also do a number of smaller performances throughout the year—generally from 6 to 8— including private events and fundraisers, dance and music festivals, and community Pop Up events throughout the city to connect with audiences who wouldn’t normally get to experience live dance.
6. When you began, what was your primary motivation/goal/mission for starting a Tap dance company?
Kat: I grew up dancing with the New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble under the direction of Deborah Mitchell. She instilled in me and all her dancers a sense of professionalism and a sense of class (and an aversion to putting dancers onstage in jeans that I’m still getting over—haha!). She did so much for the tap community: training the next generation while upholding tradition, and providing employment for dancers (and choreographers) in a world where opportunities for tap dancers are few and far between.
When I returned to the U.S. after completing my graduate work in London, I found that there were a lot of great tap dancers in Philadelphia but none of them was doing the kind of work I wanted to do. For starters, I love to tap in heels! So I wanted to bring together a group of artists who shared my love of both rhythm tap and Broadway or musical theatre style tap, drawing influences from other dance forms.
I never envisioned myself running a company—I co-produced one show with another tap dancer for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (now FringeArts) in 2011 mainly because I wanted to dance. We brought in musicians, built a small stage in my dad’s garage, sold out, and broke even by $11.
I started out just wanting to dance—and dance in heels!—but now I’m more interested in providing a platform for tap artists.
7. As time has moved on, how has that mission evolved?
Since that original show, we’ve grown into a full-fledged arts organization, with part time administrative staff (and an official paid intern!), an advisory board, and three companies: our First Company, comprised of professional dancers; our Apprentice Company, comprised of talented pre-professional high school and college-aged dancers; and our Youth Ensemble, comprised of 10-18 year olds from PA, NJ, and DE who audition for us each season and perform in our annual production of THE TAPCRACKER.
This past summer, we had a number of strategic planning meetings to reflect on the success of our current programming and the challenges we face, in addition to where we are as a company, and where we would like to be. We revised our mission statement and hired our first professional graphic designer to redesign our logo. Since rebranding, we’re especially excited for the 2019/2020 season and for gearing up for our 10th anniversary just around the corner!
8. What has been the biggest challenge of starting a dance company?
Kat: Where to begin??? The most difficult part has been managing my time: this is a labor of love for all involved, but I feel strongly about paying our dancers for their time, and am learning, as I have gotten older (and have added motherhood to the many demands on my time), that there needs to be a balance. There is always more that we want to do, but we have to prioritize, delegate, and sometimes let certain things go.
Speaking less philosophically now, I have also become friends with many of the dancers in our company. We’re at each others weddings, baby showers, etc., and when we’re hanging out socially, we can be friends. But at rehearsals—especially if we’re pressed for time—I have to be the boss lady. And I don’t always want to be in charge, but it’s more stressful for everyone involved if we don’t have someone taking the lead.
Katie: I agree managing my time is the biggest challenge. As Managing Director, I handle most of the behind-the-scenes administrative work that people don’t realize goes into running a successful company. Kat and I pride ourselves on professionalism and organization. We have had several theaters and businesses comment that they enjoy working with us because of it! But it’s not easy planning out the rehearsal and performance schedule for 30+ dancers who are juggling day jobs and school, handling the accounting (I never imagined our annual operating budget would increase as rapidly as it has!), designing marketing materials, maintaining multiple social media accounts… the list goes on!
Tap dance has been such a big part of my life, and I’ve been involved in administrative capacities for years. In high school as Assistant Director of Footprints Tap Ensemble (last month’s Operation Tap Takeover company!), in college as Assistant Director of InSync Dance Theatre (now H2 Dance Company), and now with The Lady Hoofers. I can’t help but get involved because I love it so much. But I’m also a full-time college writing professor, run a literary magazine, and have a husband and dog at home. Balancing it all is a challenge!
9. What has been your proudest moment in directing this dance company?
Kat: This past January, we were invited to perform in the New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble’s 25th Anniversary Concert. Having grown up dancing with the company, this was a huge honor made all the more exciting by the fact that we ran into Savion Glover backstage. The dancer’s sign in sheet was a who’s who of great names in tap: Brenda Buffalino, Tony Waag, Evan Ruggerio, Karen Callaway Williams, Maurice Chestnut, Mercedes Ellington, and of course Deborah Mitchell herself, and my name and The Lady Hoofers name was on the list. I was so proud that I stole the sign in sheet after the show and brought it home to frame.
Katie: In THE TAPCRACKER, our Youth Ensemble performs “The March of the Tower Guards” which was choreographed by my teacher, Sarah Cook Flynn. She’s the Founder of Footprints Tap Ensemble and originally created the piece when I was a high school senior dancing with Footprints. We performed it in The Nutcracker on Broadway in 1999, and were the only student group in the production performing our own choreography. The Nutcracker was played by Mike Minery, and the whole experience was such a thrill—traveling to New York City, performing on a Broadway stage, taking master classes from dancers such as Omar Edwards and Jimmy Tate, attending a tap jam at Cafe 41 hosted by Jimmy Slyde… I realize now I’m talking about my own past experience as a dancer! But Sarah instilled in me a great appreciation for tap history and for knowing your own roots as a tap dancer, and being able to pass that on is truly special. Having the opportunity to share her choreography with our own Youth Ensemble dancers each year and watching them bring the piece to life time and time again fills me with such pride.
10. What words of advice would you offer to someone who is starting their own tap dance company?
Kat: In assembling your team, be sure to find people who share your values and your idea of professionalism. Katie and I work so well together because I trust her to send out a press release that reads exactly how it would if I had written it myself and vice versa. Also don’t count on dancing all that much yourself once the administrative work takes over! I produced the first official Lady Hoofers concert because I wanted to dance, but nowadays at performances I’m usually so busy doing development work, liaising with our front of house staff, thanking our volunteers, and doing last minute costume checks for our dancers that I generally miss the company warm up and need to take a few minutes by myself to get my head in the game before I take the stage.
Being the Artistic Director means that I am usually the public face of the company so I’m constantly running around the entire theatre and changing shoes as I go: sneakers to oversee the load in, high heels for my curtain speech, ballet flats for sneaking up to the balcony to watch from the house, then back into heels to mingle with audience members during intermission, then finally into my tap shoes if I’m performing in the second act, then back into heels again to greet people after the show, then sneakers to strike.
Katie: Don’t be afraid to start small, build slowly, and ask for help. As Kat said, we work very well together, and part of our partnership is that when one of us has a big idea, the other is there to keep us grounded and ensure we think through the practical aspects of reaching each goal. It has allowed us to take measured risks that have paid off along the way. We also recognize the strengths of our dancers both on and offstage and are able to use their expertise in marketing, costumes, videography, etc. We’ve also learned that it’s worth casting a wider net for support when we don’t have the skills in-house. We attend local conferences or sessions hosted by non-profits or granting agencies related to working in the arts, we have hired an accountant and a graphic designer in the past year, and we’re constantly seeking feedback from our dancers, students, and audience members to ensure we’re moving in the right direction.
11. Do you have any current projects the company is working on that you want to promote?
Kat - We each have pet projects for the 2019/2020 season that we’re excited about. I’m working on ethnographic research in breastfeeding, it’s normalization, and racial disparities in maternal healthcare (a little known fact about me is that I did my graduate work in anthropology). I’ll be conducting interviews with local moms and working with two of our dancers to create an original musical score using— wait for it— the sounds of an electronic breast pump, which functions basically as a metronome. Since the birth of my son in 2018, I’ve spent many a long rehearsal pumping breastmilk in a spare office or breastfeeding my son backstage so I want to choreograph something that draws from these experiences.
Katie: One of our dancers, Meg Sarachan, is a filmmaker specializing in dance documentaries and films, and in 2015 we produced “Dollar: A Rhythm Tap Short Film,” which she directed. In 2020, we’re planning to film my choreography set to an instrumental version of the song “Room Where It Happens” from the hit musical Hamilton. The piece involves many ins and outs, and features all of our dancers onstage at once for a big finish. I’m envisioning filming some of the smaller sections outdoors in historical locations around Philadelphia, and the final sequence onstage. We’re still in the early planning stages of this project, but I can’t wait to dig into some storyboarding next month.
This week we’re preparing for our third annual production of THE TAPCRACKER, so that has been taking up much of our time. But we’re starting to prepare for our spring concert ON TAP as well, including new choreography by both Kat and myself, reprising our 2017 premiere “...and Away” by guest choreographer Caleb Teicher, and a world premiere work by our 2020 guest choreographer Robyn Watson—Philadelphia native who served as dance captain for the Broadway musical Shuffle Along and has been training with Savion Glover for the past 8 years. We keep very busy—never a moment to rest!
12. Describe your company in one word!
Kat - Loud :)
Katie - Non-stop