Alexis Robbins Taps Into Community

Tap dance is an indelible form of American art, a practice we have all seen on screens little and big, but have you ever seen it done in a public park? And have you ever thought, ​“Hey, I wish I could do that?” Tap dancer and choreographer Alexis Robbins is here to tell you that you can see it and practice it, on a stage and in a park, right here in New Haven in the days and weeks to come. 

Robbins has been working diligently to bring more tap opportunities to the New Haven area since arriving in 2018, offering private classes through her own kamrDANCE Studio and Neighborhood Music School, as well as public instruction through her CT Office of the Arts-funded Rooted in Dance and Music community project. In addition to her work as an instructor, she has been performing at a variety of indoor and outdoor venues, including the upcoming Rhythm Exchange on the New Haven Green, this Thursday, Sept. 29, and The Creative Circle Modern Dance event with SYREN at the Hill Museum of Art on Oct. 22. 

Dance has been an integral part of Robbins’ life since she was a toddler enrolled in a tap class at two-and-a-half years of age by her mother.

“I was super shy, super not an outgoing kid at first,” she said. ​“That definitely changed, but at first, I was like a deer in the headlights in class.” 

Having a father who was a drummer helped as well. ​“I grew up around music constantly being on and there being rhythm around me all the time. I’d like to think that influenced my eventually falling in love with what I do.”

Growing up in Wakefield, R.I., ​“doing the small dance studio life and small-town life,” Robbins started to expand her horizons in high school by training in Boston and New Hampshire as well as attending tap workshops and intensives in New York. She ended up at Hofstra University, where the seeds of kamrDANCE were planted and then blossomed once she graduated with her degree in dance and moved to New York City.

At Hofstra, ​“I was very nurtured in creating work there, which was great,” said Robbins. ​“A lot of those folks that had been dancing for me at school, we all moved to the city and so I just started using kamrDANCE as the brand and the company name and started performing all these small pieces that were already created as a student, doing that for around a year and a half around the city.”

Robbins eventually moved to New Haven when her then-partner (now husband) got a job at Yale. She knew very little about this city, but quickly fell under its spell. 

“I’m not gonna lie, I knew mostly about Yale from Gilmore Girls,” she said with a laugh. ​“Connecticut was always the place in between Rhode Island and New York, or Rhode Island and New Jersey, the place with the traffic. And now I’m like, ​‘oh my God, I love it so much.’”

She said she spent a few months ​“in that weird place” commuting back and forth to New York and not quite sure what she wanted to do. ​“And then I was like, ​‘if I’m going to be here, I’m going to be here,’” she said, and in 2018 began teaching classes.

“I got very lucky and was able to build relationships with folks who had space in Erector Square,” she said. A few of those people let her use spaces to hold her own tap classes, something she was eager to bring to the city.

In New Haven, she saw, ​“you can take adult ballet and sometimes you can take contemporary classes, but I was like, ​‘I don’t see tap, so I’m going to fill this void I see.’” Initially only one or two people showed up. In 2019 the numbers grew. 

That year was also when Robbins began making connections with the dance, arts, and music communities here, meeting performers at Neighborhood Music School and the New Haven Jazz Underground jams at Three Sheets. The relationships ​“just kept branching out from there.” She met musicians such as Clifford Schloss, Dylan Olimpi McDonnell, Finn Henry, Mike Carabello, and Avery Collins, among others, that she has ​“great respect for.” She forged working relationships with musicians where she was treated as an equal — something she has often had difficulty with in the past in a variety of settings. 

“That’s the barometer of whether or not I want to work with certain musicians,” said Robbins. ​“The understanding that I’m an instrument and not just there. We’re in conversation together. We’re accompanying each other, or one person solos while the other person is holding down a groove, or a bass line, or whatever.”

Robbins also recently started working with saxophonist Jamie Berlyn, who she will be performing with along with Schloss at the next Arts and Ideas Rhythm Exchange event on the New Haven Green.

“He’s another person I met at a jam, and I felt a connection with,” she said. ​“I was treated as an equal. We had musical and real-life conversations, and then I was like, ​‘what if we played together?’ and he said ​‘absolutely,’ and now we’re doing it.”

Robbins has performed with live musicians throughout her life and has always felt strongly about it, in terms of what tap is and can be.

“There’s quite a hefty music scene here,” she said. ​“And I’ve always thought of myself as a musician. Tap dance is percussion. We are trained in music and in jazz and improvisation. You have to be able to sing what you’re doing and count what you’re doing, all of those notes are transcribed the same way. I got here and was like, ​‘I’m surrounded by musicians and less so surrounded by dancers,’ and that just kind of pushed me to do solo work or do collab work with live music. And it’s kind of sent me on a different path I wasn’t necessarily expecting, but absolutely have fallen in love with. And now with 100 percent confidence, I’m a musician and I work with musicians, and this is what we do.” 

Robbins has two major events coming up in October, each showcasing a different aspect of her career. The first is a collaborative effort called Creative Circle: A Dance Performance on Oct. 22 that she is co-producing with SYREN Modern Dance, a company that primarily performs and functions out of New York but has ties in Connecticut. Lynn Peterson, who co-runs the company with Kate Sutter, lives in New Haven. Robbins met her and her husband, visual artist Eric March, when they both were working out of Erector Square. Though SYREN has performed all over the world in the past 20 years, they’ve never performed in New Haven. The two companies have partnered with the Hill Museum of Art to bring an all-ages show (12 and under are free) with tiered pricing. 

“We really want everyone to have access,” said Robbins. 

Each company will perform separately; then a ​“short improv jam” is planned, which will be the first time the two companies will be dancing together. Both companies are also showing the initial stages of something brand new, according to Robbins, and will be having a Q&A where they can talk about the process. 

“We want professional high-level dance to be happening more in New Haven, but we also want to break down that wall with you just seeing finished products all the time with makeup and lights and all that,” she added. 

Robbins also wants to convey the message that ​“dance can happen in smaller spaces. Dance can happen in museums. Dance can happen anywhere.”

Robbins has made her piece more personal by using music reconstructed from a band her father was in called Mercy Velvet. Her sister Sarah, who is a singer and poet, will also be performing at this event. Robbins will be performing with her main collaborator, Luiza Karnas, who is a Brazilian tap dancer she has been working with since 2018. ​“She’s my rock … an incredible dancer and performer,” said Robbins.

Are you or do you? - 5 minute excerpt from kamrDANCE on Vimeo.

October will also see the culmination of the second Rooted in Dance and Music program — the first was held in May at Peter Villano Park in Hamden — a community dance experience that is ​“a free opportunity to dance,” Robbins said. Six rehearsals/gatherings are scheduled (attendance at all six is not mandatory) to perform tap dance to live music. No experience is necessary. 

“Everyone is allowed, all abilities,” said Robbins. ​“You don’t even have to be able to walk. If you can sit, you can tap dance.”

Funded by an Artists Respond grant from the CT Office of the Arts, the event will be similar to the one held in May, except based in Westville this time, with rehearsals at Coogan Pavilion and the performance on the Central patio. Live music will be provided by Medusa, Cliff Schloss, and others, culminating in a jam session.

“It’s called Rooted in Dance and Music because I believe that we were designed to be rooted in those two things,” said Robbins. ​“And also, dance and music should always be happening at the same time. It is intentionally outside because I also want people to walk by and be like, ​‘what’s that? How did that get out here?’ which was pretty successful at the park last time.”

During the Covid shutdowns Robbins performed many shows outside, including as part of the Arts and Ideas Arts on Call program, and taught classes over Zoom. Eventually she was able to bring another dream to fruition: her own studio, remodeling her garage and opening kamrDANCE Studio LLC. This fall she is ​“test driving” a schedule of five classes that include absolute beginner, beginner, advanced beginner, and intermediate; classes are still available via Zoom for those who can’t make it in person.

“Class is super approachable,” Robbins noted; you don’t even need tap shoes to participate. ​“Tap dance is an improvised art form. Tap dance is percussion with your feet. You can wear boots. You can wear sneakers.”

The absolute beginner class requires no experience. Advanced beginner is where ​“you’re aware of vocabulary and you’ve done it a little bit, but it’s still new to you.” Intermediate classes are ​“the more advanced class, so if you’re coming to that there’s an expectation that you’ve done this for a bit.” 

“For any of the other classes you don’t really need to know anything. You just have to have a willingness to shift your weight, to move, to smile, and to swing it out to some jazz, and that’s kind of it. The idea is that you’re learning about an art form. It’s an American art form. It’s a Black American art form rooted in the history of this country, and I’m just sharing what I know and what I love, but of course it’s great exercise and it’s awesome for your brain.” 

Robbins hopes to help erase misconceptions of tap and make it more accessible to everyone. ​“Tap dance is music. Tap dance is magical. Obviously, I’m a little biased, but I’m both dancer and musician. My body is participating in making percussive rhythms that allow you to feel something and to hear something, or they add to Cliff’s guitar and Jamie’s saxophone,” Robbins said.

She is also passionate about creating more shows like the event with SYREN. ​“I want dance to happen way more in New Haven. We’re making really high-quality work … we’re going to make you feel stuff. We’re going to make you cry. We’re going to make you think. We’re going make you leave with questions about identity, questions about your connection to your physical self and how that is and isn’t separate from your brain.”

And in the end, for Robbins, it’s about connection to ourselves, each other, and community.

“I think that as humans in this world, with lots of being on the phone or computer, a lot of people are disconnected from how their physical self takes up space and their relationship to space, and your relationship to people in the space around you,” said Robbins. She thinks tap dance can help with that; if we all danced, she added with a laugh, ​“I think we would be happier and nicer people.”

For information about any of Robbins’ classes or any of the events mentioned above please visit the kamrDANCE website here.