Tappers With Attitude Youth Ensemble: 1991-2010


Tappers With Attitude Youth Ensemble (TWA) was a unique and multicultural group of young dancers on the cutting edge of the renaissance of tap dance since 1991. TWA was made up of dynamic dancers ranging in age from 10 to 18, representing numerous schools in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. The company was under the direction of Victoria Moss, with Assistant Directors Yvonne Edwards and Lisa Swenton-Eppard.
TWA's mission was to preserve and promote tap dance as a percussive art with an emphasis on the jazz tradition, and to foster a new generation to carry on the art. In addition to presenting works by nationally known tap artists, the company commissioned new choreography by emerging tap choreographers, and encouraged and assisted TWA dancers to choreograph, thereby nurturing the creation of new expressions and voices in tap.

 

TWA has received three Metro DC Dance Awards for "Outstanding Youth Performance," in 2004, 2007 and 2010. The company performed regionally, nationally, and on stages throughout the Washington metropolitan area, and had appeared on local and national television. Performance highlights include: BlackRock Center for the Arts, Wolf Trap's Filene Center and Children's Theatre-in-the-Woods, Strathmore, the Scholastic National Arts Awards, the Smithsonian Institution, Carter Barron Amphitheater, Franklin & Marshall College, the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, the New York City Tap Festival, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, and the Chicago Human Rhythm Project. TWA was especially honored to have been selected to perform in the 1999 Kennedy Center Honors' tribute to Shirley Temple Black. In 2007, the group was chosen by the Chicago Human Rhythm Project to take part in an All- American tap ensemble commissioned by the China Performing Arts Agency to perform at the Beijing International Dance Festival.

 

Tappers With Attitude Youth Ensemble was founded in 1991 by Renee Kreithen and Yvonne Edwards, and was a program of Tappers With Attitude, Inc., a 501(c)(3) performing arts organization based at Knock On Wood Tap Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland. Tappers With Attitude, Inc. has been a recipient of a Cultural Alliance Business Volunteer for the Arts Organization award, and awarded grants from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts, the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, the Prince George's County Arts Council, Target, and the Washington Post.

 

Tappers With Attitude 2009-2010

Photo by Jeff Kenton
Photo by Jeff Kenton

Tappers With Attitude 2008-2009

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Tappers With Attitude 2007-2008

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