Avalon Rathgeb

Avalon Rathgeb graduated from Bird College in 2009 after studying on a 3 year full-time scholarship. She is the recipient of two internships from the American Tap Dance Foundation 2009/11, Grant Swift’s TeAyPe (Melbourne, Australia) 2009-10, a scholarship for the Los Angeles Tap Festival 2012, winner of the 2013 cutting contest at Stockholm Tap Festival, invited to accept 1 of 25 places reserved for outstanding dancers in the 2014 Tap programme at the School at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, USA.

Her career highlights include: dancing in the opening ceremony of London 2012 Olympic Games, the closing ceremony of the European Games (Baku Azerbaijan) 2015, Artistic Director of ‘Old Kent Road’ 2014-current, principle dancer for ‘Tapestry Dance Company’ under the direction of Acia Gray 2017-19. Avalon has been endorsed by Ruben Sanchez DanceWear since 2014.

Avalon is the Founder and Artistic Director of London’s pre-eminent tap dance company ‘Old Kent Road’ which she founded in London in 2014 supported by Arts Council England. An excerpt of ‘Fall Out’ was accepted to perform at Resolution! 2015, the full length work premiered in 2016 which went on to tour throughout the UK for 3 years including DanceBase as part of Edinburgh Fringe where they received 5* reviews and ‘recommend show’. In the summer of 2018 ‘OSCiLLATE’ co-choreographed by Avalon and Dre Torres premiered at the world renowned dance house Sadler’s Wells- The Lilian Baylis Theatre. OSCiLLATE has been performed at venues such as: The London Cabaret Club as part of The London Tap Dance Intensive and DanceBase as part of Edinburgh Fringe Festival, DanceEast, Salisbury Playhouse as part of Salisbury International Arts Festival, Bath Theatre Royal, HOLT Festival, Latitude Festival, Grand Theatre Shanghai (China).

Humbled to have spent 2 years performing as a principal dancer with ‘Tapestry Dance Company’, North America’s only full time and salaried tap dance company Texas, USA. Under the direction of Acia Gray Avalon performed and toured shows including: ‘Just Tap’, ‘Mice and Music- A Jazz Tap Nutcracker’, ‘April Fools’, ‘Sound and Silence’, ‘Pass- ing it Forward- The American Dream?’ and ‘The Souls of our Feet’.

As a solo artist Avalon frequently teaches and performs internationally for tap festivals and events including; Dubrovnik Tap Festival (Croatia), Taptastic (Germany), Stockholm Tap Festival (Sweden), Prague City Tap Festival (Czech Republic), Australian Tap Festival, TapUnited (USA), Escola Luthier Dansa (Spain), Tanzhaus (Germany), Tip-Tap Run (Poland) Moscato Tap Festival (Italy), Tapworks (Malaysia), Bolzano Tanz International Dance Festival (Italy), Riff Dallas (USA) Workshops (Singapore), Odessa Tap Festival (Ukraine). In the UK she has performed at events including: Harrods Boxing day opening celebration, the 1st International Chinese Film Awards interviewed for BBC Radio London. In 2016 Avalon was invited to create a show ‘K-Tap’ in Kuwait in collaboration with LAPA LOYAC. In the UK Avalon teaches regularly at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Pineapple Dance Studios, Morea Performing Arts and South London Dance Studios.

Based back in London Avalon since 2019 has toured OSCiLLATE with ‘Old Kent Road’ over 40 times. In 2020 she collaborated on a piece of devised theatre ‘Plaza’ as a movement director for Central School of Speech and Drama. Since the pandemic Avalon has created over a 100 online classes with Old Kent Road reaching 1000’s of students worldwide enabling the tap dance community to continue to dance together. She is positive that our current climate of events will bring a new way forwards embracing a better energy on earth.

From September 2021 Avalon is excited to share her expertise at two of the top performing arts colleges in the UK: Performers College and Arts Ed.