The beat is on – Harkness Dance Center’s Alison Manning on 92NY’s Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival

Dance is ever moving forward at the Harkness Dance Center – this month, with enthralling new beats. 92NY’s first annual Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival (Apr 21-27) is a weeklong celebration of rhythm dance, with performances showcasing tap, flamenco, hip-hop, Kathak Indian dance, Irish step dancing, street dance and Appalachian flatfooting, performed by leading and next-generation talent. Curated by Harkness Co-Executive Director Alison Manning and renowned choreographer-performer Caleb Teicher, the festival – which also includes workshops – explores the connections between different forms of rhythm dance and celebrates their histories, and is presented in collaboration with Works & Process at Guggenheim New York, El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109, and Museum of the City of New York. Ahead of the festival, we talked with Manning about it all.

What is rhythm dance? What are the elements or qualities the different forms share?

Percussive or rhythm-based dance is a global phenomenon rooted in rhythm, resistance, joy, and cultural expression.

Tap dance, a quintessentially American dance-form, was born from the cultural fusion of African rhythmic footwork and Irish and English clogging traditions during the 18th and 19th centuries. Enslaved Africans in America maintained their cultural identity through movement, using syncopated stomps and slaps — early forms of body percussion — as drums were often banned. Meanwhile, European immigrants brought clog and jig steps to urban centers. These threads met in cities and on the minstrel and vaudeville stages, where dancers blended styles, creating early Tap. By the 20th century, Tap had become a virtuosic form with artists like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the Nicholas Brothers, and later Gregory Hines and Savion Glover, Michelle Dorrance, and Dormeshia pushing it into new territory.

Clogging is one of America’s oldest percussive dance forms, shaped in the Appalachian mountains where Irish, Scottish, English, and Indigenous step traditions met African American rhythmic sensibilities. Originally a social dance performed to old-time fiddle music, Clogging’s grounded style and offbeat accents reflect a deep connection to community.

Born in Harlem during the 1920s and ’30s, Lindy Hop is a joyful, improvisational swing dance that grew from jazz music and the African American social dance lineage. With roots in Charleston and Breakaway, Lindy Hop celebrates connection, rhythm, and community. Danced to big band jazz in ballrooms like the Savoy, it broke racial barriers and influenced everything from jitterbug to rock and roll.

Hip-Hop dance emerged in the 1970s Bronx as a form of self-expression, resistance, and community pride. Rooted in African and Afro-Caribbean diasporic traditions, Street styles like breaking, popping, locking, and later litefeet and krump became tools of storytelling and identity.

At its heart, Kathak is a percussive dance form, with the dancer’s feet playing a key role in producing rhythm. Kathak, like many other percussive dance forms, has historically been a form of resistance and cultural expression. Its origins in temple rituals and later its adoption in courts as a form of entertainment reflect its evolution as a storytelling tool. The artistry, speed, and dexterity of Kathak’s footwork have influenced and been mirrored in many contemporary percussive forms. In today’s world, artists like Rachna Nivas blend Kathak with other dance styles, helping to keep this form alive while also expanding its boundaries to interact with genres like Jazz, Contemporary, and even Tap.

In all of these lineages and stories, rhythm-based dance forms are languages of percussion, joy and resilience. It is a living archive of who we are, where we come from, and who we’re becoming. This festival at The 92nd Street Y, New York, Works & Process at The Guggenheim, PS 109 El Barrio Artspace and the Museum of the City of New York is a celebration of that journey and our hope is to create more space for these artists and dance forms and forge new partnerships in our uptown community to do so.

Why is this festival an important addition to the NYC dance landscape, and what makes it distinct from others that came before it?

Tap and rhythm dance festivals and a variety of Hip-Hop and Lindy Hop festivals have existed in NYC over many years. There has been a loss of space for Tap and Percussive dance forms over the years here in New York though, and my hope in launching this festival was to create another platform for Percussive and rhythm-based dance artists. In working with Duke Dang at Works & Process at the Guggenheim and Caleb Teicher, we also are striving to create a festival that reflects a very careful curatorial lens about the connective fibers between these rhythm dance forms, the pairing of things together, how various forms speak to one another, and honor histories and traditions and lineages in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

What can audiences experience over the course of the festival?

The festival opens and closes with performances at Works & Process at the Guggenheim. Opening night (Mon, Apr 21) features a Swing Dance party with Gaby Cook and Danny Jonokuchi & the Revisionists; closing night (Sat, Apr 27) an evening of Tap dance with the iconic Brenda Bufalino. Performances on 92NY’s stages begin Tue, Apr 22 and span an incredible range of rhythm dance, with spotlights on Indian Kathak dance, Appalachian Clogging, and Tap (Tue, Apr 22); Hip-Hop, Street music and Tap (Wed, Apr 23); and Cuban music, Tap, and Rumba-tap (Thu, Apr 24). On Fri, Apr 25, we present Soles of Duende – an amazing group Caleb introduced me to, and a kind of microcosm of the entire festival. This is a trio of women whose work brings together three forms of rhythm dance – Classical Indian, Tap, and Flamenco – and encapsulates the connective fiber of their individual stories and lineages in a really beautiful and natural way. The evening also features LaTasha Barnes, who connects Swing back to its roots in the Harlem Renaissance, and puts the form front and center as an art form rooted in the African American experience, sharing the joy, lineage and social history of the dance form in all of her work.

There are so many amazing artists involved in each of these evenings, including numerous incredible musicians – there will be live music every night, with some recorded music and DJ artists, in addition. And each event held at 92NY is followed by a brief talkback with Caleb and the lead artists on each program, where they will be discussing the historical connections between these forms and how today’s practitioners are evolving each of these forms through a contemporary lens. It’s going to be an amazing week.

How does rhythm dance fit within the rich history of dance at 92NY?

I made some discoveries when I was researching 92NY’s dance history for our 150th anniversary season, and there is, in fact, a bit of history in these forms. There were early performances of Native American dance in our hall. Paul Draper presented his classical ballet-influenced Tap in the 1940s. We presented Indian dancers with live music in the 1940s and ‘50s. Similar to our broader legacy in dance, 92NY created a space for artists no one else was supporting, presenting forms that would otherwise have had no platform at all, or taking them from the dinner club or nightclub or Broadway or film, and putting them on a formal concert stage. The Dance Center focused heavily on Contemporary and Modern dance artists in the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s. While artists such as David Parker (who blends rhythmic dance with Contemporary dance and Ballet) and others were featured in informal performances in Butterwieser Hall in the early 2000’s, rhythm dance forms were not the primary focus curatorially at 92NY through much of its history. This festival in particular, and Harkness’ programming in recent years, aims to widen the lens and make more space for this wide range of dance forms and artists.

What is the impact you hope to make with this festival?

I believe that rhythm dance forms can speak to audiences who are not dance lovers, or who even say they don’t like dance. This festival was inspired by one I produced in my former role as Executive Director of The Yard (on Martha’s Vineyard) where I got to see in action how accessible and exciting these dance forms were for new audiences. My goal for this festival is to create a larger platform for both established voices and rising stars in rhythm dance forms, shine a light on the lineage of these forms, and welcome and excite new audiences who may never have thought of coming out to see dance onstage.

The partnerships being forged through this project with Duke and the Works & Process team at The Guggenheim, El Barrio Artspace at PS 109, and the Museum of the City of New York are such a fun and beautiful way to bring this uptown community together – we are four institutions within a 15-block radius working in collaboration, presenting seven days of performances, workshops, talk-backs, live music, and a social dance party, and building community. This is a story of neighbors coming together to support each other and this amazing community of artists, and to hold space for joy during tumultuous times. I hope everyone will join us!

Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival is produced by and a collaboration between 92NY Harkness Dance Center and Works & Process, in partnership with El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109, Guggenheim New York, and Museum of the City New York.

Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival performances are Apr 21-27. Tickets and details: https://www.92ny.org/event/uptown-rhythm-dance-festival