Lane Alexander

CHRP Founding Director, Lane Alexander, is a master teacher, performer, choreographer, producer, advocate, and community organizer. Over the last 34 years, he has led CHRP to become the first year-round presenting institution in the U.S. dedicated to American tap and contemporary percussive arts including CHRP's education center/business incubator, the Mayfair Arts Center, the City-wide percussive dance festival, Stomping Grounds, the oldest and most comprehensive festival of American tap, Rhythm World, free arts education programs in Chicago Public Schools, We ALL Got Rhythm, and its resident ensemble, Stone Soup Rhythms.

As a teaching artist, Lane served as a Tap Master for the national touring company of Billy Elliot in Chicago and served for 10 years as a faculty member and senior advisor to the Beijing Contemporary Music Academy. He has served on the faculties of the Gus Giordano Dance Studio, the Lou Conte Dance Studio, Jacob’s Pillow, Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, Stephens College, and UNLV. He continues to teach beginning through advanced tap classes at the Mayfair Arts Center and at workshops and festivals around the world including regular pilgrimages to Tokyo, Paris, Stuttgart, Zurich and Helsinki.

As one of the foremost experts on Morton Gould and Danny Daniel’s Tap Dance Concerto, Lane soloed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops (Skitch Henderson), the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic (Rachel Worby), the Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall with the Little Orchestra Society (David Allen Miller), Chicago's Symphony Center with the Chicago Sinfonietta (Paul Freeman), the Pritzker Pavilion with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra (Christopher Bell), Powell Hall with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (David Robertson) and was part of a rare performance of the work as a trio with Fred Strickler and Sam Weber at the Long Beach Arena with Long Beach Symphony (Michael Krajewski).