By Shiriel King Abramson
The city of Barcelona may seem an unlikely hub for tap dance. Nestled on the Catalan coastline, this metropolis is known for its cutting-edge design and modernist architecture. If we’re talking rapid footwork, the city’s got the decorated FC Barcelona soccer team and the Catalan Sardana, a local folk dance — and also the massive marches in protest of the city’s housing crisis.
At a glance, Barcelona’s real estate may seem too expensive, its culture too distinct, and its location too far from the United States to be a hot spot for one of America’s oldest art forms. Yet it has become a “capital” of tap dance in Europe, one of the biggest tap scenes east of the Atlantic.
I stumbled upon Barcelona’s tap scene as a college student, when I received funding to research contemporary American tap dance. I started tap dancing as a child and had always thought of it as an American form (which it is, originally). The early pioneers of tap dance were Black Americans who rarely got the limelight and saw their moves copied by white Hollywood stars. The history of this dance seemed like an emblem of America: racist, rhythmical, and cross-culturally transcendent.
As I went about my research, though, I discovered tap dance had spread across the globe. I learned there were festivals happening frequently around the world, some for a weekend and others a full week. Tap dancers were developing their skills within and without dance schools. This dance form that could not have evolved without the confluence of historical factors in the United States – British colonization, transatlantic slavery, Irish indentured servitude – was now finding a pulse in different pockets of the world.
Barcelona is one such pocket. At the center of the scene today is the Escola Luthier de Danza, a dance school founded by Guillem Alonso and Alícia Alcalay in 2011. Alonso, who directs the school and teaches regular classes, started dancing as a kid, following a lineage of tap dancers in Barcelona dating back to the 1920s.
Alonso moved to New York to train with legends like Brenda Bufalino before returning to Barcelona to share his knowledge and techniques. Alonso and his colleagues trained a new generation of tap dancers, and that generation, in turn, developed its own styles, pedagogies, and companies. They’re still developing them, as are their students. The result is a hotbed of creativity.
I wanted to see it for myself. After my undergraduate summer research concluded, I spent a quarter abroad in Spain and visited Barcelona. I took a drop-in class at Escola Luthier from the exquisite Estefania Porqueras, a student of that “next generation.” The class was phenomenal – challenging in technique, rhythmically fascinating, and unlike anything I’d encountered in my decade as a tap student in America.
After graduating into the pandemic and holing up in lockdown, I couldn’t shake the idea of returning to Escola Luthier to join their formació profesional, the only year-long intensive training program in the world for tap dancers of intermediate and advanced levels. Other dance forms have bachelor’s degrees, conservatory studies, and M.F.A.s for structured high-level studies; tap dance has only Escola Luthier.
I moved to Barcelona and stayed for nearly three years. The abundance of classes, jams, and performance opportunities felt too exciting to leave after finishing my time in the formació.
Escola Luthier offers over 50 weekly tap classes for adults plus several more for kids. While there, I discovered that Escola Luthier is not the only school in Barcelona offering rigorous tap classes. The Escola Coco Comin recently opened TAP Conservatory, a less intensive training program run by Sharon Lavi, who is of the same generation as Alonso. Other schools outside the city bring their students to perform at Claque Al Carrer, the annual Barcelona street festival organized by Tot Pel Claque, Cataluña’s tap dance association.
What makes Barcelona’s tap scene unique, in addition to the sheer number of classes and dancers in one place, is the community, according to Gisela Noguero Gelmà, author of El claqué a Barcelona: La història d’una comunitat. (Translation: Tap Dance in Barcelona: The History of a Community.) That there is a book written in the city’s native language focused specifically on the tap scene, by a member of the community, speaks to the community’s strength.
I came to Barcelona to study tap dance, and I stayed for the community. In the United States, when I’d show up for tap class, I’d arrive just beforehand and leave just afterward. Tap was a fun challenge to the brain and the body; only in college was it a social occasion too, when I joined a tap group. But in Barcelona, the culture was less individualistic. Showing up for class meant chatting with people in the lobby, trading book recommendations with the secretary, grabbing coffee with classmates, then heading to Ciutadella Park for a tap jam on the weekend, or to Golem’S theater for the monthly jam with live music. Arriving in the formació profesional led to getting invited to join a WhatsApp group of over 145 Barcelona tap dancers who share events, jams, master classes, housing leads, casting calls, employment opportunities, and more. It turns out dozens of dancers just like me move to the city for tap and stay for the abundance of community.
Barcelona is often represented in the media as anti-foreigner, with the skyrocketing cost of rent leading to a wave of anti-tourist activism. (Many activists, however, would refute the claim, preferring instead to draw attention to the consolidation of properties by foreign investors.) Tap dance, meanwhile, is often assumed to be of a bygone era. When the most famous tap dancers left Hollywood and Broadway, the art form largely left the public consciousness.
Barcelona’s tap scene is proof that neither idea is true. The city, indeed, has a severe lack of affordable housing; but the community is the most welcoming of outsiders of any I’ve encountered. And while the big screens and stages no longer offer as many opportunities for tap dancers, in Barcelona, the culture is flourishing both underground and in the bright sunlight of the public parks and streets.
The city is home to a tap scene as vibrant as ever, rooted in local tradition while still opening its doors – and floors – to dancers worldwide.
