Heather Cornell is teaching at VanTap

Friday November 8

Heather Cornell Classes
6:00pm Beginners
7:00pm Advanced Beginners
8:00pm Intermediate / Advanced

$25 / class
VanTap members get 10% off class!

REGISTER HERE

About Heather’s Class:

Ms. Cornell has her own brand of technique, inspired by many of the masters that she studied with and honed for the last 35 years on stage.  Challenged by her mentor, the great bassist Ray Brown, she was encouraged to reintroduce the connection of tap dance to the musical world.  Her technique classes are rooted in music and explore how the basics elements of tap dance connect to important musical concepts like pulse, groove and time.  Come and explore in a new way!

Saturday November 9 Heather will be available for private or semi-private tap lessons. Book yours now!

About Heather Cornell:

Heather Cornell creates visual music ensembles where she functions as the percussionist. Her current project, “Making Music Dance”, (a multi-generational music ensemble), released their first CD in Nov. 2015.  They premiered their new show at St. Jax Sanctuary in Montreal, Canada and then Harbourfront Theatre in Toronto, Canada in spring, 2017.  “Tap& Traps” is a textural journey with percussionist Jesse Stewart (Ottawa) that was premiered at the Ottawa Winter Jazzfest in 2018. “Finding Synesthesia”, commissioned by Southbank Center was the first dance ever at the London Jazz Festival, England. TapMotif in Lefkada, Greece was Heather’s laboratory for 8 seasons, where she trained free-thinking “bilingual” artists in music and dance. She has held her NY Intensive workshop since 1989, (now called her Tap Labs) where she has pioneered a style of teaching that was unique to the world of tap, co-teaching with musicians.  “CanTap”, featured Canada’s finest tap dancers and musicians for evenings of new approaches to improvisation.  As artistic director for Manhattan Tap, one of the busiest music/dance companies in the world in the 80’s and 90’s, Ms. Cornell brought tap dance to the international concert stage.  She was known as a mover and shaker of the tap dance renaissance and continues to win awards internationally in the music and dance worlds, most recently a national co-commission from New Music USA.  As a soloist, she performs full evenings internationally, including for a sold out 1,200 seat crowd in Bogota, Colombia, where she performed an evening of improvisation with local musicians.  Her latest passion is the music and dance of Peru and she was the guest of honor, performing and teaching at the First International Zap(ateo) Festival in Lima in 2016.  She has been travelling the world teaching, performing and mentoring since the late 80’s.

Heather trained directly with the first generation tap masters, and has taught and inspired four generations of tap dancers, musicians and actors internationally.   She was called “the Oscar Peterson of hoofing” (Globe and Mail, Toronto) and was the only tap dancer mentored by the infamous bassist, Ray Brown.  She is a pioneer of concert tap and, beginning in the mid 80’s, has led the scene in working with world music.   She choreographed  “The Play What I Wrote” for Broadway and was movement director for “Three Penny Opera” for Atalaya in Sevilla, Spain.

CD, Radio: Making Music Dance CD (2015); WYNC’s live radio show, “Around New York” for 4 years (1993 – 96).  “Q Playlist”, Tap as Music, CBC National Radio (2018)

TV, Film:  “Thinking on Their Feet, Women of the Tap Renaissance” (Jenai Cutcher); “Gotta Move, Women in Tap” (Lynn Daly); ”“KQED special w. Honi Coles and the Jazz Tap Ensemble; “Gregory Hines’ Tap Dance in America” for PBS; Manhattan Tap featured special on “Sounds Impressive”, Winnipeg, Canada.

Awards: Hoofer’s Award (Tap City, 2015); Juba! Award (CHRP, 2012); FloBert Award (NYC Tap Day, 2011); Tapestry Award (Boston, 2010); Legends of Tap (Vancouver, 2008). 

Heather has been on faculty at Manhattanville College, NY, Marymount College, NYC, and Capilano University, Vancouver, Canada, and received the “Distinguished Artist” award from Bergen Community College’s Music Department (Bergen, NY 2014).  She was recently honored to record her oral history for the NYC Public Library for the Arts at Lincoln Center to be included in their Dance collection this fall.

Website for more info:  www.manhattantap.org