2010 - Constance Valis Hill is a jazz tap dancer, choreographer, and scholar of performance studies whose writings have appeared in Dance Magazine, Village Voice, Dance Research Journal, Studies in Dance History, and Discourses in Dance; and in Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African-American Dance (2001), Taken By Surprise: Dance Improvisation Reader (2003), Kaiso! Writings by and about Katherine Dunham (2005), and Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy, Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (2008). She studied tap dance with Charles “Cookie” Cook and various members of the Copasetics; performed as one member of the tap-dancing Doilie Sisters; and directed Sole Sisters for the Changing Times Tap Company. Her book, Brotherhood in Rhythm: the Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers (2000), received the Deems Taylor ASCAP Award. Her forthcoming book, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (Oxford University Press) has been supported by grants from the Rockefeller and John Simon Guggenheim Foundations. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and is a Five College Professor of Dance at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.