Syncopated Ladies
This female tap-dance band soared after Beyoncé shared their tap tribute video; their performances have been viewed more than 50 million times. will perform Sunday, Feb. 27, presented by the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center.
This female tap-dance band from Los Angeles, California, brings fierce rhythms and fast footwork with a feminine touch. With a cutting-edge sound and look, they are the music and the dance. This diverse, dynamic crew of fly girls are on a tap mission, ready to deliver rhythm and style to the world. The group have performed on stages worldwide and won the “So You Think You Can Dance” television show’s first dance crew battle. They have appeared on television shows such as “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” “Dancing With The Stars,” “Glee,” “The Ellen Show” and “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and in films including “Idlewild.” They received a shout-out from actor Ryan Reynolds on Jan. 20 on “Good Morning America,” for teaching Reynolds and Will Ferrell how to tap dance.
The performance will be at 5 p.m., in the Alys Stephens Center’s Jemison Concert Hall. Tickets are $22, $32 and $42. Call 205-975-2787 or visit AlysStephens.org.
Syncopated Ladies was created by Emmy Award-nominated tap dancer and choreographer Chloe Arnold, protege of Debbie Allen. Arnold and her sister Maud Arnold were exposed to tap dance and some of the greats, like Gregory Hines, at a very young age. After working on-set with Beyoncé in the early 2000s, Chloe Arnold was inspired to create highly stylized tap-dance videos for YouTube, telling her sister, “We should rock out like she does. Why can’t we have that powerful voice as women in tap?”
The sisters “wanted to put the same level of production and energy behind tap dance in the way that people were doing it for pop stars,” Chloe Arnold told the Los Angeles Times in 2020.
The group filmed a tap tribute to Beyoncé of her song “End of Time.” The video blew up online, and caught the attention of Queen B herself, who shared it to her Facebook page with the words “They killed it.” That quote propelled them into a new stratosphere — what the sisters call “The Beyoncé effect” — and the rest is “herstory.” The group also includes dancers Anissa Lee, Assata Madison, Gisele Silva, Pamela Yasutake and Melinda Sullivan.
A free Meet the Artist performance by Syncopated Ladies for area schoolchildren will be at 10 a.m. Monday, Feb. 28.
Join ArtPlay on Wednesday, Feb. 2, at noon for a virtual panel discussion on the experiences of Black dancers in honor of the upcoming Syncopated Ladies performance. This event is free but registration is required; register online. The ArtPlay Lunch and Learn Series is made possible by the Hugh Kaul Foundation.