The Phenomenal Line-up of Guest Artists for TAP-IN 2025!
MOVE! is honored to have each of these amazing instructors as an integral part of TAP-IN to Colorado TAP DANCE FESTIVAL
♦ Bril Barrett ♦ Barbara Duffy ♦ Danielle Heller ♦ Emily Jones ♦ Karen Kleber ♦ Brent McBeth ♦ Jenna Roe ♦ FREE Panel Discussion with Faculty ♦ Tap JAM with the Faculty
Guest Artist 2025
Barbara Duffy’s performance highlights include “The Gregory Hines Show”, where she was a featured dancer, actress and choreographer, “Gala for The President”, performing with Gregory Hines before President and Mrs. Bill Clinton and as dance captain and featured dancer in Brenda Bufalino’s American Tap Dance Orchestra. Barbara performs as a featured soloist across the United States and overseas, including London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, where she was hailed as “a riveting performer” by the Independent. Her all women ensemble, Barbara Duffy & Company performed at the Duke Theatre, NYC, the Joyce Theater, NYC, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, NYC, the University of Richmond, the Tanz Haus Theatre in Dusseldorf, Germany, Jacob’s Pillow and with Tony Waag’s Tap City on Tour.
In August, 2008, Barbara received the “Rhythm World Award” for preserving and passing on the legacy of Leon Collins. She was also the recipient of the American Tap Dance Foundation’s prestigious “Hoofer Award” in July, 2013 and the New York National Tap Day Committee’s “FloBert Award” in May, 2015. She holds a BA in Performing Arts. A highly sought after teacher, Barbara has taught at numerous workshops and festivals in 20 countries, was on the faculty of Steps on Broadway, Broadway Dance Center and the American Tap Dance Foundation. Since 2014, she has been a proud faculty member of the American Tap Dance Foundation’s Tap Teacher Training program.
Most recently, Barbara was featured as a dancer and actor in the short film, “When Snow Falls”, directed and choreographed by Anthony Morigerato, co-starring Ted Louis Levy. The film has won the 2021 New York International Film Award for Best Musical and Best Director for a short film. It has also won an honorable mention for Musical/Dance Film from the 2021 Los Angeles Film Awards.
Barbara’s book, “Tap into Improv, A Guide to Tap Dance Improvisation” is available on Amazon.com. Her greatest inspirations are Brenda Bufalino, the late Leon Collins and the late Gregory Hines.
Guest Artist 2025
Emily Jones has been teaching and performing tap in Denver for over five years, and is excited to return to the festival’s staff this year. She is a founding member of Sole Merger Tap Dance Company, and lead choreographer of the company’s breakout collaborative piece with Radical Love Movement, “Pulse”. In 2024, Emily and fellow Sole Merger company member, Kaitlyn Powers, began the Youth Tap Showcase to create a performance opportunity for up and coming youth tap dancers in Colorado. She also spoke with Danielle Heller on a panel for dance educators at the 10th Annual Colorado Dance Education Organization conference regarding creating and growing tap curriculum for various age and skill groups, as part of Danielle’s faculty for the Rocky Mountain Tap Teacher’s Training Program. Emily teaches on Thursday evenings at Move!, and on rotating Sundays each month. She is originally from Denton, TX, and has a degree in American Dance Pedagogy from Oklahoma City University. Her fun fact is that both her mom and her mom’s mom were professional tap dancers too!
Guest Artist 2025
Karen Kleber’s folks always knew that she was born to dance, but it wasn’t until age 15 that she started studying seriously at the Carmichael School of Performing Arts in Northern California. Everyday after school studying and performing ballet, jazz and of course, tap.
Two years later, a call back from A Chorus Line in San Francisco sends Karen to New York city to await an opening in the Broadway cast. In the meantime, she spies an open call for David Merrick’s 42nd Street in Backstage Magazine. She and her BFF Neva went, and long story short, they were both cast! Eight shows a week for five and a half years, and it was time to change it up. A tap concert with DancEllington, Mercedes Ellington’s company, was the perfect gig. Incredible choreography by Maurice and Gregory Hines, and a special feature by a young Savion Glover. That show led to a Broadway industrial production in Hong Kong, produced by the Tony Award winning choreographer, George Faison. Along the way, Karen met Dr. Bill Kleber, the man of her dreams, and soon they moved to Colorado with their four fantastic kids. She became known along the Front Range as “Dr. Dance”, teaching tap, choreographing musicals and show choirs. (Most notably, Berthoud’s award-winning Bridge Between Show Choir.)
Enter tap legend Barbara Duffy, who suggests the Tap Teacher Training Program at the American Tap Dance Foundation in New York City, which literally changed Karen’s life! Karen currently holds two certificates in this challenging program that focuses on jazz rhythms, tap history, technique and the Copacetic Cannon.
Creating choreography and teaching has always been her passion. She brings a sense of humor and joy to her classes, while always carrying a deep respect for the art form and the masters of the past.
Karen along with Sally Fortenberry created “KrampStamp”, a company that produces tap videos and champions tap wherever possible. Realizing the need for fun tap merchandise in the marketplace, she and her tap student Marlene Cavanagh created TapTogs. An online shop just for tap dancers! You can check them out on Instagram @TapTogs.
Guest Artist 2025
Bril Barrett is a Chicago tap dancer, teacher, and historian. Born and raised in North Lawndale on the West Side and now based in the South Side’s Bronzeville, his four-decade career is rooted in place and crosses time.
Tap was created by enslaved Black people who, when drums were made illegal due to the instrument’s role in resistance, communicated by making rhythms with their bodies instead. These rhythms were passed on in clandestine improvisation circles known as “shouts” or “ring shout,” one of the few West African prayer practices to survive the Middle Passage. It is in this tradition that Barrett learns and teaches.
Barrett fell in love with tap at age four thanks to a program offered by his first teacher, Carlton Smith. After the program ended, Barrett’s mother committed to continuing the lessons, riding with him two hours on the Red Line each way—where Barrett met his primary mentor, Ayrie “Mr. Taps” King.
Barrett joined a long line of dancers who came up “shedding wood” on street corners. After winning grand prize in 1988’s Search for Chicago’s Tap Dance Kid, he toured with companies such as Riverdance and Aaron Tolson’s Imagine Tap. During that time, he learned from several early 20th-century legends of tap, including Dr. Jimmy Slyde, Dr. Bunny Briggs, and Dr. Leonard Reed.
Barrett soon realized that many audiences didn’t know tap the way he had learned it. They might know Shirley Temple or Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, but did they know Robinson’s teacher, Alice Whitman? Did they know about tap as resilience, or resistance? He began to include a history lesson in every class he taught, recounting stories given by his teachers in turn.
With co-founders Jumaane Taylor and Martin ‘Tre’ Dumas III, Barrett created the Making A Difference Dancing Rhythms Organization (M.A.D.D. Rhythms) in 2001 to provide a place for young people to learn and grow. M.A.D.D. Rhythms is now a leading tap collective worldwide, developing a partnership with Bronzeville’s historic Harold Washington Cultural Center to provide affordable arts education and mentorship to Chicago youth.
In 2020, Barrett was awarded the Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Lab Artist Fellowship, and in 2022 he received the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award. M.A.D.D. Rhythms is a part of the International Association of Blacks in Dance’s 2023-24 FRWD cohort, as well as the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project’s 2023-24 cohort.
Barrett’s pedagogy of shared improvisation for social-emotional learning shows his students that their lives and selves matter. His circles weave past, present, and future to pass on our history in the way it was created—in the rhythm of our breath, and bodies, and feet.
Guest Artist 2025
Brent McBeth is a tap dance teacher, performer, dance competition adjudicator and choreographer residing in NYC. Brent is on tap faculty at Broadway Dance Center and has taught at numerous conventions and universities around the country. As a performer, Brent’s favorite performance credits include: White Christmas (Original Cast Recording); Anything Goes (Arena Stage, D.C.); No, No, Nanette (NY City Center); Fosse (dance captain of the International Tour, starring Ben Vereen); Big Apple Circus (NY Lincoln Center); Thank You, Gregory! (American Tap Dance Foundation). His choreography has been showcased in theaters around the world, including: NY’s New Victory Theater; Germany’s GOP Variete Theater; Austria’s Festival der Traume; Opera North at the Blow-Me-Down. He is delighted to join the faculty of Tap-In to Colorado Dance Festival this summer!
Guest Artist 2025
Jenna Roe is a tap dancer, instructor and choreographer.
Her professional career started in Chicago as a faculty member of Lou Conte, home to Hubbard Street Dance Company. While in Chicago, Jenna tapped her way into being a company member for Especially Tap Chicago, Bam, and Rhythm Iss.
Jenna then moved to New York City to study under the mentorship of Dereck Grant (Bring in Da’ Noise, Bring in Da’ Funk). Jenna also developed a relationship with Emmy-nominated choreographer Chloe Arnold which led to performing with the Syncopated Ladies. Additionally, Jenna managed Chloe Arnold’s New York City based tap company, Apartment 33. During the five years as manager, Apartment 33 was an Artist in Residency at the American Tap Dance Foundation, performed on Good Morning America, danced at the Lincoln Center, and the New York City Botanical Gardens. On top of this, Jenna taught aspiring young dancers at the American Youth Dance Theater.
Jenna’s other accomplishments include: faculty member of Arthur Murray New York, an assistant choreographer with New York City Dance Alliance, and an ensemble member of Rhythm is Our Business. She continues to focus on her craft in Denver, CO.
