Hillary-Marie is a Tap Dance Artist, a visual music maker who tells vivid stories through the universal languages of music and dance. She is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed soloist and collaborator, as well as the Founder of iTapOnline.com, the go-to online tap dance resource for tap dancers and tap teachers since 2016, also home to the iTap Teacher Certificate Program. At age 17, she founded Jersey Tap Fest, named the Best Place to See Live Dance Performances in New Jersey by New Jersey Stage, and was the Founder and Co-owner of Grooves Unlimited Dance Studio (2012-2023), the only dance studio in the U.S. dedicated entirely to hip hop and tap dance, home of FutureSTEP Tap Company. 

Hillary-Marie’s dancing has been described as ‘like feathers with steel bones’ due to her combination of strength and grace as she has shared the stage with music greats like grammy-award winning accapella group Take 6, grammy-nominated group Big Bad VooDoo Daddy and trombone-legend Wycliffe Gordon. She has served as Adjunct Professor at Montclair State University and guest faculty at Alvin Ailey and STEPS, and was a Jersey (New) Moves Fellow at NJPAC from 2019-2022. She has also received multiple Individual Artist Fellowships from the NJ State Council on the Arts, one of their most competitive awards, as a 2017 recipient in Choreography, a 2023 funded finalist in Choreography, and a 2024 recipient in Interdisciplinary Arts. 

A native of New Jersey, Hillary-Marie has been recognized by and featured in the New York Times, Star Ledger, Dance Studio Life Magazine, Dance Spirit Magazine and Dance Teacher Magazine. She has given a TedxTalk about her artist-entrepreneur experience and has traveled the world as a featured soloist at the Apollo Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Highline Ballroom, Copacabana, NJ State Theater, NJPAC, SOPAC, Symphony Space, Westobou Festival as well as Tap and Jazz festivals in Europe, Central America, South America, Asia and throughout the U.S. For many years, she performed weekly at Harlem’s Cotton Club as a part of Bessie-award winner Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards’ group “Sophisticated Ladies”, and previously worked with Emmy-award winning artist Jason Samuels Smith (A.C.G.I.) as well as Derick K. Grant (Rhythm Is Our Business). She has performed with grammy-award winning accapella group Take 6, grammy nominated group Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and with trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. Before his passing she performed with award-winning composer of A Chorus Line, Marvin Hamlisch, and has danced with Heather Cornell (Conversations), Roxane Butterfly (New Dance Alliance), Maurice Chestnut (Above Ground Project), Christopher Scott (W-L-U-V), Lisa LaTouche (Tap Phonics), the Boston Tap Company (Rhythm in the Night), the NJTAP Dance Ensemble, Nat Adderley Jr., and both the Princeton and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras.
 

Writing about Soul Walk, Hillary-Marie’s debut full-length show, renowned dance critic Robert Johnson said: ‘Some performers travel with their own atmosphere, a rosy bubble that floats off the stage and envelops the crowd allowing grateful viewers to forget where they are. Tap dancer Hillary-Marie and her accomplices do that’. She subsequently followed up with VIBE - a celebration of tap dance as a universal energy and language of the world; a show that Dance Metro DC says ‘serves as a springboard for locating tap dance within a concert dance context… serving to truly bring the house down.’  Hillary-Marie’s Sole Music Collective is also host to the #Herspective video series. Within Sole Music Collective, Hillary-Marie has collaborated with vocalists Emily Braden and Nancy Harmes, bassist Jennifer Vincent, pianists Mark G. Meadows and Willerm Delisfort, percussionist Vincent Smith, and singer-songwriter Ami Madeleine. 

Hillary-Marie has since toured her interactive and improvised UNplugged house concert series, bringing the joy of live music, tap dance and story telling into a low-key and intimate environment. Her most recent creation, In The Pocket, debuted at NJPAC in 2022 and wonder Hillary-Marie a funded finalist spot by NJSCA and the Midatlantic Arts Foundation as an Individual Artist in Choreography. In this work, Hillary-Marie transforms the void of silence into a world brimming with music and movement where she harnesses the powerful pulse of rhythmic performance with a combination of tap dance, body percussion, and other surprises along the way.

Hillary-Marie began her dance training with Jazz dance at the age of five at her local dance studio in New Jersey, and started studying tap dance at age twelve. By the age of fourteen, she was appearing in eleven shows a week in the pre-professional company ‘Showstoppers’ at the Edwards Nash Theatre. Her studies continued with Karen Callaway Williams, whose credits include Tony Award Nominated Duke Ellington musical Play On! In 2006, Hillary-Marie became a member of the New Jersey Tap Ensemble’s youth company and just three years later became a principal dancer for the company under the direction of Deborah Mitchell. From 2007 until his death in 2013, Hillary-Marie was mentored by and assistant to the Vaudeville legend, Dr. Harold ‘Stumpy’ Cromer, half of the world-famous duet ‘Stump & Stumpy’, sharing bill with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. 

Hillary-Marie feels that artists are the messengers of the world and strives to increase public awareness and appreciation of tap dance as an instrument. She is thankful for the artists of the past and present who have provided and continue to provide abundant inspiration and encouragement, and she is focused on serving tap dance by uniting the tap community, teaching its history, preserving its percussive and improvisational style, expanding the respect for the art and promoting the dance as a cherished American art form.