ROOTS
Acia Gray has spent more than four decades connecting the living history of American rhythm tap to its future. A musician, tap dancer, choreographer, master teacher, author, producer and artistic leader, Gray is recognized internationally for a career grounded in musicality, improvisation, artistic lineage and the belief that tap is, at its heart, music.
Emerging professionally during the tap renaissance of the 1980s, Gray became part of a remarkable period in which a new generation of artists worked directly with the masters who had shaped the form. She was selected to work with legendary tap dancer Charles “Honi” Coles in America's first creative residency for tap at the Colorado Dance Festival in 1989, returning the following year for a residency with Jimmy Slyde. She was featured in the documentary A Class Act: The Magic of Honi Coles. Her most significant artistic mentor became internationally celebrated tap artist Sarah Petronio.
Throughout her career, Gray has shared stages and creative spaces with generations of tap artists, including Fayard Nicholas, Arthur Duncan, Donald O'Connor, Honi Coles, Jimmy Slyde, Chuck Green, Steve Condos, Buster Brown, Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, Sarah Petronio, Gregory Hines, Savion Glover and others. Her work places her within a direct artistic lineage connecting the masters of twentieth-century tap with today's international rhythm tap community.
In 1989, Gray co-founded Tapestry Dance Company in Austin, Texas, with Deirdre Strand. Under Gray's artistic leadership, Tapestry has grown into a nationally and internationally recognized professional dance organization and became, for many years, the country's only full-time professional repertory tap dance company. Gray has produced and choreographed more than 65 original full-length works through Tapestry, creating an extensive body of work that brings tap into conversation with jazz, contemporary dance, theatre, spoken word and social experience.
Among her most significant works is The Souls of Our Feet — A Celebration of American Tap Dance, selected for the National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces initiative. The production celebrated historic rhythm tap repertoire alongside the work of living tap masters and toured throughout the United States, Canada and China. The NEA described the project as part of an effort to preserve and present significant American dance works.
Gray is also the founder and longtime Artistic Director of Austin's Soul 2 Sole International Tap Festival, which has brought generations of tap dancers together for performance, education, improvisation and the transmission of tap history.
Her influence extends deeply into education. Gray has taught and choreographed at universities, festivals and dance organizations throughout the United States and internationally, with appearances spanning Europe, Canada, Asia and beyond. Her teaching has included among others the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, Tap City/New York, Colorado Dance Festival, St. Louis Tap Festival, Tanzhaus NRW in Düsseldorf, Barcelona and Luthier Tap Festivals, international programs in Austria, Cyprus and London, and numerous academic institutions. Her work continues through teaching and solo performance appearances across the United States and internationally.
Gray is the author of The Souls of Your Feet — A Tap Dance Guide for Rhythm Explorers, a widely used resource for tap dancers and educators that has been translated and published internationally, including editions in the Czech Republic and China.
Her honors include the Hoofer Award by the American Tap Dance Foundation, recognition as a Texas Tap Legend, the Third Coast Rhythm Project Legacy Award, induction as an inaugural member of the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, numerous Austin Critics Table and Austin Chronicle honors, and recognition at the 2018 Dance/USA conference among other recognitions. She has also appeared in documentaries chronicling tap history and its artists, including Tap or Die, Thinking on Their Feet — Women of the Tap Renaissance and the PBS Arts In Context program Passing It Forward.
The Austin Chronicle has described Gray's dancing as possessing an extraordinary ease and musicality, writing that her tap dancing becomes its own language and that she doesn't simply dance to music—she enters into it, with her feet and body becoming one with the rhythm.
Today, Gray continues to perform, teach, choreograph and mentor internationally, carrying forward knowledge received directly from the artists who helped shape modern rhythm tap while encouraging new generations to discover their own voices within it.
For Acia Gray, rhythm is more than something we hear. It is a way of listening, communicating and being fully present—and the conversation continues.
www.aciagray.com / www.tapestry.org
Passing it Forward (PBS Arts In Context - 2016)
Be Somebody - Passion Portrait
A Vision In Rhythm - Documentary (2011)
2019 Tapestry Compilation (History) 2019