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• Josh Hilberman

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1966-
Birth Date: Jun 26, 1966

Place of Birth: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Josh Hilberman, tap dancer and self-declared "greatest tap-dancer in Somerville [Massachusetts]" has gained a reputation as one of the leading choreographers of tap dance. He performed his first tap solo as a final project for his senior high school, and looked into tap's cultural context as a dance major at Wesleyan College. At that time, he still had not appreciated the contribution of jazz music to the dancing; "I was going to dance in silence, I thought jazz tap was old people doing old stuff. I was arrogant!," he told Boston Globe dance critic Debra Cash. But at a tap seminar in Boulder, Colorado in the late 1980s, master teacher Brenda Bufalino gave Hilberman an assignment, to get some jazz records and improvise to every cut. For six months, he danced to the music of jazz greats Count Basie and Miles Davis. "When you dance to every cut of a record it's so that you can develop your chops, your technique, at any speed, in any style, moving round time and the feeling," he later recalled. "No dancer should be limited to 32-bar tunes with medium tempo." He was also influenced by the late 1950's jazz tap recording, Baby Laurence: Jazz Master.

In 1985 Hilberman made his debut as the rear end of a donkey, and from then on has enjoyed a wild ride in tap dance. Inspired by friendships with and instruction from such legendary rhythm tap dancers as Bufalino, James Buster Brown and Charles Honi Coles, Hilberman's credentials led him to tap adventures all over the world. He was a featured soloist and instructor at such tap- festivals as the New York City Tap Festival's Tap City, The North Carolina Rhythm Tap Festival,DC, Metro Tap Fest, Portsmouth Percussive Dance Festival, St. Louis Tap Festival, Chicago Human Rhythm Project; Southeastern Tap Explosion; Montana's Rhythm Explosion; and the TAP festival in Dusseldorf, Germany. Hilberman also performed for three years with Heather Cornell's Manhattan Tap. In 1994, Hilberman doubled as a soloist and master of ceremonies in the Boston Dance Umbrella's fourteen-city tour, Fascinating Rhythms, featuring Dianne Walker, Jimmy Slyde, and Savion Glover. His controversial one-man show White Jew Blues received rave reviews from the Boston media for its playful and provocative look at racial issues in American life. In 2000, Hilberman created the role of Jazz Nut in the jazz nutcracker production, Clara's Dream, and was a guest performer in Decidedly Jazz Danceworks' winter season, 2001: A Tap Odyssey. That same year he celebrated his debut with mentor Brenda Bufalino's American Tap Dance Orchestra, and was selected as guest choreographer and soloist in the tenth anniversary celebration of Tappers With Attitude. He has worked with such musicians as pianists Paul Arslanian, John Medeski and Daniliio Perez; and bassists John Lockwood and Alan Dawson.

Hilberman continues to perform in the Uinted States and Europe, with appearances at Lincoln Center, the Toulon Jazz Festival, St. Louis Tap Festival, Barcelona's Nit de Claque, and Munich's Unterfahrt. His innovative choreography has been performed by the premier youth tap group Tappers with Attitude and North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble; tap soloists Van Veen/deBraal (Amsterdam) and Tapa Toe (Berlin); as well as Boston's Legacy Dancers, Youth Dance Unlimited (Calgary), the New York Tap Collective, and Washington D.C.'s Step Aside. He has been a faculty member at the Leon Collins Dance Studio, Northampton Center for the Arts, Roger Williams University, and Mount Holyoke College.

[Sources: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, a Cultural History (2010); Debra Cash, "New Tap-dancing Voices to be Heard at Ryles," Boston Globe, Mays 10, 1990]