About
Born in NYC, Ethel Bruneau was a veteran performer of top variety shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, moving to Montreal in 1953 while on tour with Cab Calloway. Featuring the Bruneau family members and other prominent acts, Rhythm Lives will be curated by distinguished tap dancers Travis Knights and Tanya Knights, who began their journeys under Ethel’s tutelage. There will be a 15-minute intermission.
About Tanya Knights
Montreal native Tanya Knights studied tap dance with master teacher and showbiz legend Ethel Bruneau. Fueled by a passion for dance and a natural entrepreneurial spirit, she co-founded her first tap dance company at age 21 called Dynamix Soles. She gained significant experience and success in producing, choreographing and directing through the company. Through her leadership, Dynamix Soles often performed at corporate events and dance and music festivals in and around Montreal. In 2010, she moved to Austin, Texas and joined Tapestry Dance Company as a principal dancer under the artistic direction of Acia Gray. In 2013, after producing the Montreal Tap Dance Festival featuring Tap Master Arthur Duncan, she embarked on a self-produced teaching and performing tour of 10 countries in 100 days called the Tap Love Tour. She lives in Brampton, Ontario, and works on Tap Love Tour Productions’ documentary Restorative Culture.
About Travis Knights
Travis Knights is a tap dancer, performer, choreographer and speaker. He began his career in 2000 when he was cast as a principal dancer in the film Bojangles with Gregory Hines and Savion Glover and choreographed by the legendary Henry LeTang. Knights was a principal dancer in the video game adaptation of Warner Brothers’ Happy Feet and has participated extensively as a tap dance consultant for Cirque du Soleil.
From 2010 to 2013, Knights was a principal dancer with Tapestry Dance Company in Austin, Texas, where he won the Austin Critic’s Table Award for best dance artist in 2011 and 2013. 2014 marked the launch of his self-produced world tour, filming his web series “The Interviews” featuring celebrated pioneers in the tap dance world. He hosts The Tap Love Tour podcast featuring interviews with many inspiring artists. Knights worked with The Soulpepper Theatre Company, was the Artistic Director for the Vancouver International Tap Dance Festival in 2018 and held the “Jazz United Jam” at the Tranzac Club in Toronto for two years. In 2021, in partnership with Anandam DanceTheatre, he debuted an original work, Ephemeral Artifacts, as a four-channel video installation, with original sound design, lighting and sculptures of bells onto the historical building of Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, and then toured it as a solo show internationally.
Knights is the 2020 recipient of the Jaqueline Lemieux Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Dance in Canada and won a 2022 Dora Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance for Dance Immersion’s Legacy Tap Dance concert.
