Roxane Butterfly is the first woman tap-dancer ever to have won a Bessie Award and was also awarded for
Outstanding Creative Achievement in 1999 at the Joyce Theater in New York. Roxane was given her stage
name by her mentor, the legendary tap master Jimmy Slyde. She has toured throughout Europe, Asia, Africa
and the U.S. as a jazz-tap solo-artist, where she lead international workshops and appeared in some of the
world's most prestigious Jazz and Dance Festivals, such as Nice Jazz Festival, Roma Jazz Festival, Jazz in
Toulon, Chateauvallon, La Villette, Genova Mediterranean Fest, Tap Ahead Festival in Duesseldorf, and in
Tappomania in Stuttgart to name but a few. She originated many tap-jams in New York and Brooklyn at the
Internet Café, The Cooler, Teddy's and Make That Move (her own dance studio in Midtown). Butterfly
has appeared with jazz luminaries such as Ron Carter (for the Duke Ellington Sacred Concert under the direction
of Kenneth Klein), as well as Dennis Charles, Max Roach, Ravi Coltrane, Bob Moses, Barry Atschull, Harold Nicholas
(of the Nicholas Brothers) along with others. Roxane brought to Paris the American tap-star Savion Glover, in her
own French-American collaboration with the Jean Vilar Theater. She has performed as a featured hoofer in the Las
Vegas hip-hop musical MADhattan and created her own tap/hip-hop show entitled BeauteeZ'n The Beat,
the first ever to be exclusively created and performed by women. Roxane lives in Harlem where she continues to
direct this show with the great support of Cobi Narita's International Women in Jazz. She can also be seen regularly with the
L.A.-based Jazz and Tap Ensemble, along with tap-funkster Gregory Hines.
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