Avalon Rathgeb graduated from Bird College in 2009 after studying on a 3 year full time
scholarship. 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 except 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.
