What is the Tap Commons?
Shared infrastructure for a global community
Tap dance is practiced across six continents, taught in hundreds of cities, and connected through a network of festivals, jams, and workshops. But for all its global reach, the tap world has almost no shared digital infrastructure. Information about events is scattered across individual social media accounts. Directories go out of date when their maintainer gets busy. Knowledge — the variations, traditions, and histories of the form — circulates informally and risks being lost.
The Tap Commons is an attempt to change that. It is a collaboratively maintained digital space where anyone in the tap world can contribute: adding events to a shared calendar, creating or editing directory listings, documenting steps and their variations, sharing oral histories, or simply leaving a comment. No account is required to contribute. No single person owns or controls it.
The commons is built on a simple belief: a field this globally connected deserves infrastructure that reflects that. Directories, knowledge, event listings, and community spaces that are maintained by everyone who uses them, not by one organization, one company, or one person doing it as a hobby.
"If you're out of network, you're out of network." The Tap Commons exists to make the network visible and accessible to everyone in it.
This project is rooted in the academic framework of commons-based peer production: the same model behind Wikipedia and open source software, applied for the first time to a performing arts community. It is also a practical experiment. Can a community of practice govern and maintain a shared digital resource without requiring a large institution, a paid staff, or a commercial platform?
We believe the answer is yes. The Tap Commons is proof of concept.
Contribution and Moderation
How it works
The commons uses a simple model designed to be as open as possible while maintaining quality and trust. Here is what happens when you contribute:
1
You contribute. No account needed.
Click "Contribute" anywhere on the site. Submit a new event, directory profile, knowledge entry, or a correction to something that already exists. You can include your name for attribution, or contribute anonymously. Your choice.
Submissions go to a staging queue, not directly to the public site
2
A volunteer moderator reviews it
Within 1 to 3 days, a volunteer moderator reviews your submission for formatting, spam, and community guidelines. They are not judging whether the content is correct — the community does that. Moderators accept, skip, or decline. The vast majority of submissions are accepted.
Anyone can apply to become a moderator. No credential required.
3
It goes live in the standard format
Once accepted, your contribution appears on the public site with attribution, a way to suggest an edit, and a comments section. Other community members can add to it, correct it, or leave context.
Every entry is permanently open to further contribution
4
The community reviews and verifies
Community members can leave comments, suggest edits, and click "Looks right to me" on entries they can verify. Quality is maintained through distributed expertise, not top-down gatekeeping.
Multiple versions of the same step are always encouraged. Every tradition deserves documentation.
Design Principles
What we're trying to build
These principles guide every decision about how the commons is designed, governed, and maintained.
01
Open by default
No account required to contribute. No paywall to read. No single gatekeeper decides what counts as valid knowledge.
02
Every tradition is valid
Multiple versions of the same step are encouraged. Broadway, rhythm tap, percussive, jazz. No hierarchy of correct. Documentation precedes judgment.
03
Distributed governance
The commons is shaped by everyone who uses it. A steering group is open to anyone. Moderation is volunteer-driven, not institutional.
04
Truly global access
Free, and priced that way on purpose. Subscription platforms for tap training cost the equivalent of weeks of income for most of the world. This one does not.
05
Anti-fossilization
Built to survive any one person's absence. No single steward. Distributed maintenance. Source-available code. Everything documented.
06
Community first, platform second
The commons indexes and bridges existing group chats, forums, and regional communities. It does not replace them or try to own the relationships that already exist.
Who It's For
Everyone in the tap world
The Tap Commons was built with the full range of the tap community in mind. Not just the internationally connected festival circuit, but the dancer in a city without a local scene, the teacher without access to expensive training platforms, the organizer trying to coordinate with other organizers across borders.
🎭
Dancers and Performers
Find teachers, festivals, jams, and opportunities. Document your steps and traditions. Connect with dancers in your region and globally.
📚
Teachers and Studios
List your studio and availability. Contribute to the knowledge commons. Access peer-produced teaching resources and step documentation.
🗓
Festival and Event Organizers
List your event in the global calendar. Coordinate with other organizers. Access shared infrastructure knowledge: contracts, logistics, templates.
🔬
Researchers and Historians
Access oral histories, lineage documentation, and step archives. Contribute historical entries. Connect with practitioners who have institutional knowledge.
🌱
Newcomers to the Field
Find your way in without needing to know someone who knows someone. Discover teachers, communities, and resources wherever you are in the world.
🛠
Builders and Contributors
Help maintain the commons as a moderator, steering group member, or simply as someone who keeps entries accurate and up to date.
Governance
How decisions get made
The Tap Commons is not owned by any individual, company, or institution. It is governed by the community that uses and contributes to it. This governance is actively developing and will continue to evolve as the community grows.
At present, a small steering group of community members advises on major decisions about the site's direction, norms, and infrastructure. The steering group is open to anyone who wants to participate. It meets informally and makes decisions by consensus.
Moderation is handled by volunteer community members who have applied and been approved. Moderators review the submission queue, check for spam and formatting, and can flag entries that require identity verification (for oral histories and lineage claims). They do not have authority to suppress content based on opinion.
The full governance structure is a work in progress. Decisions made so far are documented in the research and methodology section. Feedback is welcome.
Want to help shape the commons?
The steering group is forming. Apply to moderate, or just get in touch.
Get involved →
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about the commons
Who owns the Tap Commons?+
Nobody, and that's by design. The commons is collectively governed. It is not owned by a company, a university, or any individual. The steering group makes decisions together, and the code is source-available.
Do I need an account to contribute?+
No. You can contribute a directory entry, event, knowledge entry, or edit entirely anonymously. Attribution is optional. If you want to claim a profile and receive notifications about changes to it, you can create a lightweight account. It is never required to contribute.
Who reviews contributions before they go live?+
Volunteer moderators: tap dancers and community members who have applied and been approved. Moderators check for formatting and community guidelines, not correctness. They review within 1 to 3 days. You can apply to be a moderator yourself.
What if someone posts something incorrect or harmful?+
Moderators can decline submissions that violate community guidelines. For content that goes live and is later found to be inaccurate, anyone can suggest an edit. The community verify system surfaces entries with broad community support. For harmful content, moderators can remove it.
Why are multiple versions of the same step welcome?+
Because tap dance does not have one correct version of anything. The Broadway Cincinnati and the rhythm tap Cincinnati are both real, both valid, and both worth documenting. The commons is designed to hold multiple truths alongside each other rather than enforce a single canon.
Is this affiliated with any existing tap organization?+
No. The Tap Commons is independent. It was developed as an academic research project and is now community-governed. It indexes and links to organizations like the American Tap Dance Foundation, but is not operated by or affiliated with any of them.
What does "source-available" mean?+
The code that powers this site can be read and adapted with permission. It is not fully open source (meaning you cannot copy and deploy it commercially without a conversation), but it is not proprietary either. The goal is to allow other arts communities to build their own commons using this as a template, while preventing commercial exploitation. The exact license terms are still being decided.
How do I get involved beyond contributing content?+
Apply to be a moderator via the backend, start or join a regional group in the Community section, or reach out directly to get involved in governance. All paths are available and none require credentials.
Support the Commons
Keep it free and running
The Tap Commons is free to use and free to contribute to. Keeping it that way has a cost: server hosting, domain registration, and the occasional tool that keeps it running. These are modest costs (this is intentionally low-infrastructure by design) but they are real.
If the commons is useful to you, support helps ensure it stays live, stays free, and can keep improving.
Keep the tap world's shared infrastructure free
The Tap Commons runs on volunteer labor and minimal infrastructure costs. Support keeps it online and open to everyone, including dancers in places where paid alternatives are out of reach.
Donation infrastructure in development
In the meantime, the most valuable thing you can do is contribute an entry, tell other tap dancers about it, or apply to moderate.
Get in Touch
Contact and credits
The Tap Commons was developed as a research project at Duke University studying commons-based peer production in cultural ecosystems. It is now community-governed and independent.
For questions about the project, to report a problem, or to get involved in governance: admin@tapcommons.org
For research or academic inquiries, or to reference this project in other work: read the research and methodology page.
The commons indexes resources referred to by interviewees and community members. Curation credit goes to the community. The code is source-available and documented on GitHub.