The Lady Hoofers Tap Ensemble's annual Guest Artist Commission centers the work of women, trans, and BIPOC artists through the commission of original works of choreography. Past guest artists have included:

  • Star Dixon (2025)
  • Sarah Cook Flynn (2024)
  • Michael J. Love (2023)
  • Lisa La Touche (2021)
  • Robyn Watson (2020)
  • Michele Dunleavy (2019)
  • Caleb Teicher (2018)
  • Dolores Sanchez (2017)

 

Star Dixon
(2025)

​Star Dixon is an assistant director, choreographer, and original principal dancer of world renowned tap company, MADD Rhythms. She has taught and performed at the most distinguished tap festivals in the country including The L.A. Tap Fest, DC Tap Fest, RIFF Dallas, Chicago Human Rhythm Project's Rhythm World, and MADD Rhythms own Chicago Tap Summit. She’s performed internationally in Poland, Japan, and Brazil to name a few. Performance venues include Jacob’s Pillow, Kennedy Center, and the Lincoln Center. Outside of MADD Rhythms, she's performed as a guest with such companies as Michelle Dorrance's Dorrance Dance and Savion Glover’s All Funk’d Up. Most recent awards include 3arts Make a Wave 2019, Chicago Dance Makers Forum lab artist 2022, Chicago Reader Best Dancer 2021 and Best Choreographer 2022.

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Sarah Cook Flynn
Stompin' at the Savoy (2024)

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​Sarah Cook Flynn is well-known in the tap community as the founding Artistic Director of Footprints Tap Ensemble and an established dance educator and choreographer. For 11 years, Sarah served as Artistic Director of PA Academy of the Arts and Jade Dance Project, as well as founder and director of Lady Grey's Lovelies, an inclusive, award-winning vaudlesque dance company. She has been an instructor at Penn State University, Chicago National Association of Dance Masters, Dance Masters of Wisconsin, Dance Revolution, and many more. 

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Michael J. Love
#SampledMixedAndRemixed: See-Line Woman (2023)

Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist, scholar, and educator. He is a 2021-2023 Princeton University Arts Fellow and Lecturer in the Program in Dance at Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts. His work has been supported and presented by Fusebox Festival and ARCOS Dance and he and frequent collaborator Ariel René Jackson were co-recipients of the 2021 Tito’s Prize. His embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theory and aesthetics with a rigorous practice that critically engages the Black cultural past as it imagines Black futurity. Love holds an M.F.A. in Performance as Public Practice from University of Texas at Austin.

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Lisa La Touche
Honeysomethin' Blues (2021)

Lisa La Touche has performed, choreographed and taught worldwide. Lisa’s credits include Broadway’s 2016 revival of Shuffle Along, choreographed by Savion Glover and directed by George C. Wolfe. With the cast, she performed live at the 70th Annual TONY Awards and she was a recipient of the Fred Astaire award for “Outstanding Ensemble in a Broadway show” and the A.C.C.A. Actor’s Equity Award for “Outstanding Broadway Chorus.” Lisa has appeared on Amazon’s Original Z, The beginning of everything, toured with Savion Glover in Stepz, and was in both the New York and North American touring casts of STOMP. 

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Robyn Watson
Songs from the Sole (2020)

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Robyn Watson, a Philadelphia native, began dancing at the age of five, training at La-Cher-Tari Dance Studio and later at Wissahickon Dance Academy. At the age of ten, Robyn was asked to join the Philadelphia based Tap Team Two and Company where she served as member and choreographer until 2002. In 2005, Dance Spirit Magazine listed Robyn as one of the “20 Hot Tappers, 20 and Under.” In 2016, Robyn served as the tap instructor for the Broadway sensation Shuffle Along. She has collaborated and performed with the wonderful singer/musician Rhiannon Giddens, in addition to working, studying, and performing under the direction of tap dancer Savion Glover for the past eight years. 

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Michele Dunleavy
Past, Presence, Future (2019)

Michele Dunleavy has choreographed and performed extensively throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. She works in a variety of dance forms including tap, jazz, and modern, and her choreography has been presented by arts organizations in NYC, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and others. Michele's work has been supported through grants from Penn State's College of Arts and Architecture, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and the Galaxy Arts in Education program. She is a member of SDC, the International Tap Association, and served two terms as the Northeast Regional Director of the American College Dance Association.

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Caleb Teicher
...and Away. (2018)

​Caleb Teicher, a 2011 Bessie Award Winner for Outstanding Individual Performance, one of Dance Magazine’s 2012 “25 to Watch,” and the 2016 winner of Dance Magazine’s “Best Emerging Choreographer” Reader’s Choice Award, has garnered acclaim for their work as a performer, choreographer, and teacher. Favorite credits include: dancing with Dorrance Dance, The Chase Brock Experience, The Bang Group, and Sally Silvers; choreographing Ga(y)ze for NYU’s Site-Specific Festival; and directing A Brief History of the Unites States at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Caleb makes concert dance work as the Artistic Director of Caleb Teicher & Company. They are a proud alum of the School at Jacob's Pillow and the National YoungArts Foundation.

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Dolores Sanchez
CMYK (2017)

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Dolores "Lola" Sanchez is a passionate and empowering choreographer, educator, and performer. Well-versed in tap dance, contact improv, capoeira, and street jazz. She has served as faculty at Peridance Capezio Center, Steps On Broadway, and Broadway Dance Center in New York City. She was an Adjunct Professor at Pace University for The Commercial Arts Dance Program and has been a Guest Teaching Artist at Hope College and Molloy College. She was a member of Chloe Arnold’s company, Apt. 33 from 2014 - 2017, a 2018 - 2019 recipient of a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Residency, and is the founder and artistic director for her NYC-based tap company, The Dolo Project. She is an Artist in Residence with the American Tap Dance Foundation and a guest Teaching Artist with New York City Center and Flamenco Vivo.

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Becky Mastin
Choreographer | First Company Emeritus

​Becky Mastin was a First Company Dancer, Rehearsal Assistant, and Choreographer for The Lady Hoofers from its founding in 2011 until 2016. She continues to choreograph for the ensemble. Her most recent commission, “Love Me or Leave Me” premiered in The Lady Hoofers On Tap in May 2019. 

​This project is supported in part by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.