Lisa La Touche

As a proud Canadian and New Yorker, Lisa La Touche is a Tap Dance artist/choreographer, educator and cultural historian. Her performance credits include being an original cast member in Broadway’s Shuffle Along, choreographed by Savion Glover and Directed by George C. Wolfe, where she received both the Fred Astaire Award and the Actor’s Equity Award for Outstanding Broadway Chorus. She is proudly an “Armstrong Now” Artist in Residence in collaboration and connection with the Louis Armstrong House and Museum. She also focuses some of her research and exploration in connection with her Trinidadian ancestry and is the brainchild behind her passion project “Trinidad & Tap Dance: As Folklore.”

Her TV credits include the 70th Annual Tony Awards and Amazon’s Original Z, The beginning of everything. Previous highlights have also included touring with the Savion Glover production, Stepz, performing with Dormeshia at Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club as well as performing with both New York’s Off-Broadway and the North American touring casts of STOMP. Since 2010 she has directed her own performance company Tap Phonics and has been commissioned to present choreographic works for institutions such as The Brooklyn Museum, 92Y, Gibney Dance, Decidedly Jazz and Fall For Dance North. As an educator and professor, she is on faculty at PACE University and Marymount Manhattan College. She has also taught at NYU, The School of Jacob’s Pillow, Rosie’s Theater Kids, the University of Calgary, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks and the American Tap Dance Foundation. She is also a writer and director and has enjoyed collaborating on documentary filmmaking including her film TRAX encompassing her journey back to Alberta while discovering African-American migration history to western Canada, bridging histories across borders within the African Diaspora. Above all, her proudest achievement greatest inspiration, is the gift of being a mom. For further info please visit www.lisalatouche.com

Photo: Jeremy Fokkens