Tapas Das in Blogs

You’re Invited to the 2025 Dance Teacher Awards Ceremony!

Join us in celebrating our 2025 Dance Teacher Award honorees on Tuesday, October 7th, at The Loft at City Winery in New York City. Doors open at 11 a.m., and the event will run from 11:30-1:30. Light refreshments will be served.

Get your tickets here!

The annual Dance Teacher Awards honor extraordinary educators for their contributions to the field. These are instructors who have a unique or outsized impact on their students and community, thanks to their experience, knowledge, forward-thinking pedagogy, and commitment to dancers’ overall well-being. The 2025 honorees are:

Lori Belilove, artistic director of the Isadora Duncan Dance Company and a dedicated caretaker of Duncan’s technique and legacy.
Roger Montoya, co-founder and creative director of Moving Arts Española, which uses creative-arts instruction and hands-on mentorship to change lives in rural New Mexico.
Dianne Walker, known to her students as Aunt Dianne, who has inspired and nurtured some of tap dance’s brightest lights.
Sylvia Waters, artistic director emerita of Ailey II, who, in her decades with the Ailey organization, has helped launch countless careers.

At the Dance Teacher Awards event on October 7th, you’ll get to hear from and congratulate these four luminaries. You’ll also join us in honoring the vital role dance educators play in both upholding valued traditions and keeping our art form vibrant for future generations.

Purchase your ticket today! We can’t wait to see you there.

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Next Read: The NYCDA Difference: “Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn” »

Tapas Das: Tapas Das, a young entrepreneur of our times started TWIST N TURNS in 2005. A person who is kind, generous, creative and down to earth wanted to start his own one of a kind dance academy. According to him, Dance is a language of movements that involves space, time and the human body. He was born and grew up in Kolkata, the cultural hub of India. Being appreciated in the field of dance all his life, he is extremely talented. He has been dancing since the age of four. Once he finished his high school, he learned jazz/modern and contemporary dance. His horizons were broadened even more when he started dancing Bollywood with Beat Busters for 4 years, which then was the most upcoming dance crew in Kolkata. After that exposure, he studied how to be a dance teacher, which later started helping him impart his knowledge about dance. Thus, in 2005, with the help of family and friends, he started TWIST N TURNS. Starting with a mere number of 40 students, today TWIST N TURNS currently has over 500 students. Over the time Tapas has taught and performed all over the country. He has performed in cities such as Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Jhansi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur etc. He has been an active participant in the Salsa India Congress in the cities of Bangalore and Bombay, and he has also visited various International Salsa Congresses in Europe, namely in Berlin ,Singapore, Hong Kong,Dubai. He is been also trained recently at Broadway Dance Center (New York), Alvin Alley (New York) and Steps on Broadway (New York). He is not only a dancer or teacher. He is a successful choreographer and has coordinated various shows without difficulty in our country. His leadership skills are exceptional, thus he is where he stands today. His aim in life would be to become a dance educator. He wants to share his tremendous knowledge in the right way to the right people. He is also, simultaneously running other brands like Zumba Kolkata, Bollywood Studio ArtistWala.com and India International Dance Institute.