THE TAP PRESERVATION AWARD

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Ann Kilkelly
2007 Tap Preservation Award Recipient

Ann Kilkelly is a Professor of Women's Studies and Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. She teaches a variety of performance and theater classes, women's studies seminars and undergraduate courses about community and culture, and tap classes and workshops in Blacksburg and at a number of festivals around the Southeast. She is a long time Master Teacher at the Swannanoa Gathering, first as part of their original Dance Week and next as Faculty for Sing, String, and Swing week. With her co-author Professor Mary Neth at the University of Missouri, she is co-authoring a book, Tapping the Margins. This work and the projects that led to it have comprised many years of Ann' academic research and "field" studies as a dancer and historian. Neth and Kilkelly received two Smithsonian Senior Fellowships for research in the NMAH Archives Center and a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative research grant. Ann sees her job as a researcher and collector of stories as service to artists and an art form that she loves and practices. She has danced in several concerts at the Kennedy Center, the Duke Theater during the New York Tap festival, and in many concerts of original work with artists like Elise Witt, Beverly Botsford, and Solazo. In Blacksburg, Ann directs multi-disiplinary works that feature rhythm and stories. FLAP! A Community Commotion and Return Addresses were recent examples. As a member of artists organization, Alternate ROOTS, she sees art connected to community and social change. As a writer, Ann publishes poetry, fiction, and scholarly articles in a variety of venues and publications which include: Women and Performance Journal, the American Voice, The Community Arts Network(communityarts.net), and, of course, ITA. Among her mentors and teachers she includes Brenda Bufalino, Katherine Kramer, and a host of other masters she has encountered in her more than twenty five years of dancing.

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