Twin Cities Tap Festival Concerts: Fun Facts

Tap dancer/Twin Cities Tap Festival performer Max Pollak is currently featured on the U.S. Postal Service’s Tap Dance forever stamps, issued in July 2021 during the Tap It Out — Tap City, New York City Tap Festival in Times Square.

The Twin Cities Tap Festival draws individuals not only from Minnesota but also from 12 different states and three different countries.

Dancer Donnetta “LilBit” Jackson stars in Fox’s dance drama series The Big Leap as the character Tamra. She is also a featured dancer/choreographer for Grammy award-winning artist Chance The Rapper and was recently on the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards performing with Missy Elliott.

National Tap Dance Day was declared in 1989 and is celebrated annually on May 25—legendary dancer/entertainer Bill Robinson’s birthday (which also happens to be Twin Cities Tap Festival co-director Brenna Brelie’s!).

Though the Twin Cities Tap Festival has been presented for the past seven years, it is not the first tap festival in the Twin Cities. Previous to the Twin Cities Tap Festival, the Minneapolis Human Rhythm Project was run respectively in the 80s and 90s by Ellen Keane and Cathy Wind of Keane Sense of Rhythm. Before that, Tappin’ in the Twin Cities, organized by Mary Collins, ran from 1995-2000. Check out this 1999 forum hosted at Walker Art Center as part of Tappin’ in the Twin Cities.

Twin Cities Tap Festival has partnered with Northrop for several of its festivals. Check out these 2015 and 2019 blog pieces by co-directors Kaleena Miller and Brenna Brelie reflecting on tap in the Twin Cities.

In October 1979, Beth Sartor Obermeyer organized an event that gathered 1,801 tap dancers to dance along Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. The event landed in the 1981 Guinness Book of World Records.