Billy Strayhorn Honored As Part Of The American Tap Dance Foundation’s Tap City Awards 2025
For years the American Tap Dance Foundation has provided the tap community with a home: a place to gather and celebrate, to meet and renew valuable relationships, to study and perform. The ATDF’s services are badly needed — just how much became apparent on September 11th, when, after a year’s hiatus, the organization presented the Tap City Awards at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center. The pent-up energy of the crowd was overwhelming; and this standing-room-only event, which was supposed to last an hour and a half, stretched to three hours without intermission. New York has never seen such a love-fest by the always entertaining Tony Waag, the ATDF’s founding artistic director and producer, the ceremony inducted artists into the Tap Dance Hall of Fame, and bestowed two years’ worth of Hoofer Awards and Tap Preservation Awards, amid a wealth of film clips, emotional tributes, and thrilling live performances.
Illustrating the way that ties this amazing art and tap dance a family affair, Mercedes Ellington inducted her grandfather Duke Ellington’s most celebrated collaborator, the late Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967), into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame. After the audience had swooned to the delicious melancholy of Strayhorn’s Lush Life, his great-niece, Rochelle Claerbaut, stepped up to accept the award. Though he was not a tap dancer, Strayhorn served as long-time president of the legendary tap dance club the Copasetics. Read the full review of this event written in the Dance Enthusiast below.
https://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/impressions-reviews/view/Tap-City-Awards-Tony-Waag-
