kamrDANCE - Alexis Robbins

Since 2015, kamrDANCE has been intricately fusing tap and contemporary dance to tell stories about questioning identity, our relationships with our bodies, communities we build, family legacy, and more. kamrDANCE’s choreographic works utilize the power of tap dance as music, along with original poetry, text, music, and physical theater. Under the direction of Artistic Director and Choreographer Alexis Robbins, kamrDANCE has performed at venues, events, and online performances throughout the northeast, created five dance films, and self-produced several, sold out evening length and split bill shows.
We believe that tap dance is music and that music exists to be danced to. We believe in collaboration and prioritize interdisciplinary performance works. We believe that dance can happen in any space, nothing is too big, too small, or too weird. We believe that dance and music are vehicles for connection and empathy, and therefore our humanity and survival. 

Notable performances or awards include: 
- 2024/25 New England Dance Fund Awardee
- “Tap for Today" at The Dance Hall in Kittery, ME with The Bang Group (2024)
- “Creative Circle” work in process split bills in collaboration with SYREN Modern Dance in New Haven, CT and NYC (2022, 2024, 2025). 
- “Artists Respond” Grant(s) Recipient from the COA for “Rooted in Dance & Music” in Hamden, New Haven, and Norwalk, CT (2022, 2024)
- Tom Bell & Ginger Parker Musician Residency, Artist in Residence at the Kirkland Art Center in Clinton, NY (2023) 
- Choreographic commissions from: Hofstra University (2023), Artspace New Haven (2019, 2021), Kehler Liddell Gallery (2021, 2022), Montana Dance Center (2022), Arc Dance Collective (2022), MiXt Co (2024)

We are currently creating a rock opera called The Mercy Velvet Project:
The 1999 album, Live in Vain by Mercy Velvet, exists on zero streaming platforms, and few people have heard it. But its legacy is as relevant as ever. The Mercy Velvet Project is a rock opera, a re-creation of the album. The work explores what makes us human, our collective need for community to survive—with musicians and dancers moving as one. The show tells the story of the album through tap dance as percussion, contemporary dance, original text, and instrumentation via bass, guitar, and vocals—highlighting our vulnerabilities, learning together how to find the antidote that is mercy, and in turn lead meaningful lives.

MVP will be available to tour in 2026. 

kamrDANCE is NEST Eligible.