The Tap Rebels prepare to take the stage at Atlanta Cultural Exchange

On a recent Sunday afternoon, The Tap Rebels were rehearsing in the front studio at City Dance and Music, where the company is in residence. At 19, Andrew Stovall is the youngest and one of the newest members. While Stovall led a run-through of a piece he choreographed, Tap Rebels founder and Executive Director Vanessa Zabari stood at the back, observing and documenting the process and occasionally offering guidance.

Even when the ensemble was practicing a cappella (without musical accompaniment), the studio was alive with a thrilling cascade of sound. In moments where all eight of the dancers synchronized their steps, listening to the pulsating rhythm felt like standing behind a waterfall or at the edge of the sidewalk while a marching band paraded by just a few feet away. The percussion of their steps generated an almost tactile sensation, vibrating against the skin and entraining both pulse and heartbeat.

Less than a year after announcing they were officially back with their December 2025 show, The Rhythm Returns, The Tap Rebels are representing Atlanta dance on a global stage. The company is among the artists selected to perform during the Atlanta Cultural Exchange, a multidisciplinary festival of arts and culture programming produced by the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and scheduled in parallel with the FIFA World Cup. The Tap Rebels will be in the spotlight on Monday, July 6, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., at The CTR (formerly the CNN Center) in downtown Atlanta.

The company has evolved significantly since its international debut in 2022 at the Expo 2020 Dubai, the first World’s Fair held in the Middle East. The fair was delayed until 2021-2022 by the pandemic. After that high point, Zabari said several of the original members left, forcing the company to take a performance hiatus while she sought out new dancers who could fill the void. “We were a company of all women, and some of the members, as they entered their 30s, decided it was time to get married and start a family,” she said.

Zabari also told ArtsATL that after performing in Dubai, she herself felt pressure to find other opportunities that could “measure up” to that experience. 

To keep The Tap Rebels going, Zabari knew she had to connect with the next generation of professional tap dancers. “Angela Harris [founder and director of Dance Canvas] was always putting it in my ear about how the company was going to change, and I needed to be prepared,” Zabari recalled. “But at first, I wondered where were these younger dancers that she wanted me to find?”

Fortunately, several of them found Zabari. The six new company members, longtime Tap Rebel Latonya Boston and Artistic Director Mary Beth Stinson, who has been Zabari’s partner in leadership from the beginning, bring technical strength in different styles of tap along with strong training in other forms, including jazz, contemporary concert dance, hip-hop and even ballet.

As five of the new dancers worked on one of the numbers from their hour-long mixed-rep program, their styles were indeed as varied as their tap shoes. Stovall, in dark green shoes, had a deceptive lightness in his step. “He’s soft-toe tap,” explained Zabari. “When you look at his feet, it seems like he’s not doing a lot, but you listen and you hear all of these sounds coming from those feet.”

The sounds Malik Jenkins conjured with his turquoise patent leather shoes and a heavy, grounded posture resonated with a gravity that Zabari said is typical of tap in Chicago, where Jenkins trained. Zabari said his choreographic contributions to the company’s repertoire blend hip-hop and tap.

Kaley Cox’s bright fuchsia shoes coincidentally coordinated with Monica Gardner’s hot pink and emerald oxfords, and both of them displayed a jazzy, dance hall swing in their movements.

Marley Carter, who was wearing bright orange shoes, is something of a dance unicorn according to Zabari: She is a skilled tap dancer who also has strong classical ballet technique. “She is beautiful en pointe but can switch gears and let her weight down into her bent knees for tap, and that’s very unusual,” said Zabari. Carter and Stovall will be performing a duet in which she dances in pointe shoes while he taps.

At one point during the rehearsal, Carter and Boston were going over part of the choreography in a corner of the studio while the rest of the group rehearsed a completely different section. When asked how she and Carter managed to maintain their own rhythm in spite of the much louder competing beats from the other dancers, Boston said, “You just have to tune them out and stay focused on what you are doing, because, if you let them into your head, they’re going to take you along with them.”

And yet, in spite of their individuality and the laser-like focus each of them turned to their own technique, the company could coordinate precisely when the choreography required it. Their shifting solos, duets, canons and full-ensemble chorus moments created a tapestry of percussive sound that mapped all of the actual and potential rhythms of the score for the piece, which comprised “Welcome to Atlanta,” by Jermaine Dupri; “ATLiens,” by OutKast; and “I’m So ATL,” by Bankroll Ni.

Zabari respects how tap as an art form has been handed down across generations. “I love that Sammy Davis Jr. taught Gregory Hines, and Gregory Hines taught Savion Glover,” she said. “It’s a cycle that keeps repeating.”

At the same time, she is excited by how tap evolves when it is hybridized with other types of dance. “In this show, we’re blending a lot of different styles. We’re going to have a DJ and a poet, Abyss Graham, and other guest artists that we’ve worked with in the past,” Zabari said. 

“We’re putting on a performance, and then we’re going to follow that up with a [dance] battle that includes swing, breakdancing, tap and contemporary. I want to make the audience feel like, “Oh my God. I didn’t know that tap was so cool,’”

The Tap Rebels will perform next on Monday, July 6, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at The CTR for the Atlanta Cultural Exchange.

::

Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a bachelor of arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.