Roxane Butterfly

Africa Tap-dance Tour/ Anti-Excision project
Roxane Butterfly and Beauteez'n The Beat

ROXANE BUTTERFLY
Founder and Artistic Director of Worldbeats
http://worldbeats.free.fr

Underground tap-dance icon Roxane Butterfly, has been an instrumental force in helping transform the stereotypical presentation of tap in the contemporary performing arts world. Linking her performances with social justice issues such as domestic violence and immigration, her uncommon career has led her across North and South America, Canada, all around Europe, West and North Africa, Asia and the Middle-East, Russia and the Indian Ocean. From busking in New York City to playing Las Vegas New York New York Hotel, from hoofing with Bartabas’ horse at the Theatre de Suresnes in France to the Teatro Zinzani spiegel-tent show in Seattle, from Morrocan night-clubs to international jazz festivals, from teaching in schools for the handicapped in France to joining the campaign against female excision in Guinea, from touring Israel with Peace concerts to premiering her north-african tap-fusion in Central Park… Butterfly’s achievements have been internationally acclaimed by both the music and dance critics. She debuted as a “director” at the age of 25 at the Theatre de Suresnes in Paris where she first attempted to bridge European tap with America and invited tapsters Savion Glover, Tamango and vaudevillian Rod Ferrone to participate in Suresnes-Cité Danse 1996.As a dancer deeply dedicated to using live music in all her performances, she has received the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation (USArtists International Fund), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York Foundation For The Arts, Arts International, and the Harkness Dance Space Grant. She was selected as one of the ‘25 Best’ by Dance Magazine (2002) and her company’s repeated appearances at Symphony Space owed her to be mentioned among the five most innovative dance artists of the 2004 season by Backstage Magazine. She is the only woman tap dancer to have received a Bessie Award. Her many musical collaborations include work with frame-drummer Zohar Fresco (Israel), pianist Cheikh Tidiane Seck (Mali), udist Yoel Ben SimhonWITH ZOHAR FRESCO (master frame drummer/ Israel)(Israel), jazz legend saxophonist Phil Wood, contemporary percussionists AMORES (Spain), les freres Coulibaly (Burkina Faso), vocalist Elizabeth Kontomanou (France), guitarist Stanley Jordan, bassits Ron Carter and Barre Philipps, drummer Aldo Romano, as well as hoofers Gregory Hines, The Nicholas Brothers and her mentor Jimmy Slyde (to name just a few)… Her wide musical knowledge has allowed varied audiences to find her dancing traditional jazz-standards with prestigious orchestras and big-bands (ex: New York Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Cab Calloway Orchestra & the Duke Orchestra in France), or creating new soundscapes with electronica-pioneer Graham Haynes (cornet), while experimenting at the fusion/world-music jam sessions known as ‘Speaking Tongues” at the renowned avant-garde Walker Stage loft (NYC) in the early 2000s. Butterfly has helped revitalize tap on the international music scene while expanding the art-form’s vocabulary, technic and perception.LONDON TAP JAM (free-jazz improv)WITH JAZZ LEGEND PHIL WOOD (Tribeca Performing Arts Center, New York)Recently seen dancing on the façade of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in David Michalek’s gigantic video-installation “Slow-Dancing”, Butterfly also served as casting director/chorerographer (and performer) for HSBC latest TV commercial in Istanbul (Turquey) and is currently featured in “Touch The Sound” by Thomas Riedelsheimer. In 1996, she coached the brilliant tango-dancer Pablo Veron in the motion-picture by Sally Potter “The Tango Lesson”. She has since been broadcasted on numerous international radio and TV programs. A dedicated educator the French-born ‘papillon’ has taught workshops and given seminars around the world including at the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), Dance USA and Arts Presenters (APAP) conferences, University of Virginia, New York University, New York Public Library, ImpulzTanz (Vienna, Austria), the French Embassy of Colombo (Sri-Lanka) and many more... Fluent in French, English and Spanish, her writings on tap have been published in JazzHot and Danser (in French), as well as in the ON TAP bulletin of International Tap Association (I.T.A) and in the reader’s section of The Nation. She lives between New York and Spain, where she can be found jamming with flamenco dancers in Sevilla, Barcelona and Madrid...And the beat goes on....FLAMENCO TAP JAM in Barcelona (Teatro S.A.T)ROXY BETWEEN SPAIN AND HER NATIVE TOULON (FRANCE)