Travis Knights

 

Before there was a stage, there was a circle.

 

Before there was choreography, there was rhythm.

 

Before there was tap dance, there was the human need to remember.

 

Travis Knights understands his work through that lineage.

He is a tap dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, educator, and cultural producer, but these titles tell only part of the story. At the center of his life's work is a commitment to carrying forward a cultural inheritance that predates him and will outlive him. He sees tap dance not merely as an art form, but as a vessel of memory, a living archive of resilience, creativity, joy, and survival.

 

Born in Montreal and now based in Brampton, Ontario, Travis entered the tap dance tradition through his teacher and lifelong mentor, Ethel Bruneau. Harlem-born and deeply connected to the cultural legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, Ethel offered him more than steps. She offered him a way of understanding the world. Through her, he learned that rhythm can preserve stories. That community can be built through shared movement. That culture survives when people choose to carry it.

 

For more than two decades, Travis has devoted himself to that calling.

His work has brought him to stages, classrooms, festivals, and communities across four continents. He has collaborated with artists such as Gregory Hines, Savion Glover, Henry LeTang, Ayodele Casel, Lisa LaTouche, and Theo Croker. He has performed with internationally celebrated productions including Tap Dogs, worked with Cirque du Soleil, contributed to Happy Feet, and appeared in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

 

Yet accolades and performances are only footprints along a much larger path.

Throughout his career, Travis has sought opportunities to gather people around rhythm and story. Through collaborations with dance Immersion, Anandam Dance Theatre, and Soulpepper Theatre Company, he has created works that invite audiences to consider where culture comes from, what it carries, and what responsibilities it places upon us.

 

His projects include Ephemeral Artifacts, a one person show exploring memory and impermanence; The Mars Project, a large-scale interdisciplinary work that imagines new futures for humanity through tap dance and jazz culture; and Restorative Culture: Johnathan Morin, a feature documentary examining healing, identity, and the restorative power of cultural knowledge.

 

In partnership with dance Immersion, Travis co-created and co-directed the Legacy Series: Tap Dance Symposium, an initiative dedicated to reconnecting Toronto's Black community to the cultural roots and contemporary possibilities of tap dance. Like much of his work, the symposium emerged from a belief that culture is not something we inherit intact. Each generation must choose whether to nurture it, deepen it, and pass it forward.

 

His contributions have been recognized with the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Dance in Canada, a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance, and an appointment as a Slaight Family Music Associate at Soulpepper Theatre.

 

In 2025, Travis and his wife and artistic collaborator, Tanya Rivard, formally established Tap Love Tour as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving, promoting, and advancing tap dance through performance, education, research, film, and international cultural exchange.

 

He is also the host of the Tap Love Tour Podcast, where conversations with artists, scholars, musicians, and culture bearers become opportunities to document wisdom before it disappears and to imagine what might yet be possible.

 

At its heart, Travis's work is guided by a simple belief:

That rhythm is one of humanity's oldest technologies for connection.

That culture is a form of medicine.

And that every generation is entrusted with the sacred task of leaving the circle stronger than they found it.