Bril Barrett

Bril Barrett is a rhythm tap dancer, improviser, teacher, and community organizer whose four-decade career has centered Chicago's living tap tradition. Born and raised in North Lawndale on Chicago's West Side, Barrett first encountered tap at age four through a community program led by Carlton Smith. After that program ended, his mother continued bringing him to lessons, and he later met Ayrie "Mr. Taps" King, a subway performer who became his principal early mentor and taught through jazz-centered improvisation.

Barrett's early path was shaped by street performance and informal exchange within Chicago's rhythm-tap community. In 1988 he won the grand prize in the Search for Chicago's Tap Dance Kid. He went on to perform in projects including *Riverdance* and Aaron Tolson's *Imagine Tap*, while learning from senior artists including Jimmy Slyde, Bunny Briggs, and Leonard Reed—a lineage of direct mentorship that would become central to his life's work.

As his career deepened, Barrett increasingly integrated history into his teaching. He observed that many audiences knew tap primarily through screen images but not the Black social history, improvisational practices, and teacher-to-student lineages that shaped the form. He made contextual storytelling and the recognition of elders integral to class, rehearsal, and performance, treating tap as cultural knowledge that belonged to communities, not isolated virtuosos.

In 2001 Barrett co-founded Making A Difference Dancing Rhythms—M.A.D.D. Rhythms—with Jumaane Taylor and Martin "Tre" Dumas III. What began as a volunteer program for young boys expanded into a collective, academy, teen-employment program, apprenticeship, and professional company based in Bronzeville. The organization's mission centers preserving and promoting tap while connecting artistic training to service in underserved communities.

Barrett's work continued to join creation, scholarship, and institution-building. A 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist fellowship supported research toward *Hoofin' It: The Untold Story of the Founders of Tap*, conceived as a trans-media work centered on history and live improvisation. He received the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award in 2022. In 2024 the National Endowment for the Arts named Barrett a National Heritage Fellow, its highest recognition in folk and traditional arts. By then M.A.D.D. Rhythms had reached major stages including Jacob's Pillow while maintaining free neighborhood performances and youth access in Chicago.