Katie Budris

Katie Budris hails from Chicago, Illinois where she trained in multiple forms of dance and began cultivating her love for tap as a founding member of Footprints Tap Ensemble. She minored in dance at NASD accredited Hope College where she performed with InSync Dance Theatre, Michigan’s only professional tap and jazz company (now H2Dance Company). Katie’s prior tap performance credits include: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, The Nutcracker on Broadway, Walt Disney World’s 25th Anniversary Celebration, Dance Chicago, Chicago Human Rhythm Project, and Chicago Tap Theatre’s Liason. Katie joined The Lady Hoofers in 2012, and quickly advanced to Assistant Director, and now Managing Director. Her choreography “Unchain My Heart” was selected for performance at the DanceUSA Conference in 2013. In addition to directing The Lady Hoofers, Katie is a Senior Lecturer of Writing Arts at Rowan University. 

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Tamera Dallam

Tamera Dallam is a performer and teacher who put on her first pair of tap shoes in 2004 and hasn’t stop tapping since. Tamera teaches Rhythmic Tap at Parkside Academy of Music and Dance and has choreographed several award-winning dances.  She has performed at the Suzanne Roberts Theater, Performance Garage, and Walter Gordon Theatre. Tamera spends her free time attending tap festivals where she has taken master classes with Chloe Arnold, Jason Samuel Smith, Dianne Walker, and Sarah Reich. Tamera joined The Lady Hoofers in 2015 as a First Company Member and is now the Associate Director.  She has particularly enjoyed the opportunity to learn and perform new works from guest artists Caleb Teicher and Michele Dunleavy. ​​

Lisa La Touche

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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Michael J. Love

Photo by: Uli Garcia Vela

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.

Kat Echevarría Richter

Kat Echevarría Richter is a tap dancer, choreographer, educator, and dance historian. Her professional training began with the New Jersey Tap Ensemble under the direction of Deborah Mitchell and continued under Junior Laniyan of the London Tap Jam. In 2005, she received a scholarship to Oxford University, and later returned to the UK to complete her graduate work in dance anthropology. Kat co-founded The Lady Hoofers in 2011 with Too Darn Hot, an all-female, all-tap revue for the Philly Fringe Festival. Since then, her choreography has been praised by Lew Wittington of the Philadelphia Dance Journal for “tell[ing] great stories in tap and step idioms, less reliant on tricks and traditions and more on innovative tap artistry.” Kat served as Artistic Director of The Lady Hoofers until 2024. She is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Camden.

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Sarah Vogan

Sarah Vogan began her training at a young age. Her performance highlights include: ABC Boscov's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Sunoco Welcome America 4th of July Parades, Republican National Convention, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell Inauguration Parade, and in 2003, Sarah made her debut dancing at Carnegie Hall in concert with Janellen Farmer. While acquiring her BA in dance at Mount Holyoke College, she choreographed an adjudicated piece for the American College Dance Association national festival. In 2007, she traveled to Ireland to teach American tap dance, while studying Irish step dance with international champions, Jim Hickey and Justin Walsh. Sarah teaches at many dance studios in the greater Philadelphia area and choreographs musicals for local schools and community theaters, including the Barn Playhouse and Forge Theater. She was most recently recognized by Camille Bacon-Smith of Broad Street Review as the "star turn" of The Lady Hoofers' annual spring concert, On Tap, performing "Booty Swing," a solo choreographed by Artistic Director, Kat Richter. Sarah joined The Lady Hoofers as an Apprentice in 2016 and was promoted to First Company in 2019.

Robyn Watson

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. 

Dan McCain Quartet

PHOTO BY ALEX MAGALLI

We are excited to once again work with the Dan McCain Quartet, providing students with the opportunity to improv with live jazz music during our Final Tap Jam on Sunday, August 25!

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