From lavenir.net , January 21, 2023, by Sabine Loutie. Translation by Diana D. Le. The Ampsinoise launches a tap dance festival in Liège (Belgium). The Ampsinoise Stéphanie Detry and her companion Josh Hilberman, professional tap dancers, are launching the 2nd Tap Liège Festival. From this Saturday and throughout the year, tap dancing will resound in Liège thanks to the Tap Liège Festival 2023. Behind this young festival which is in its second edition and which brings together professional companies from all over the world, we find Stéphanie Detry, 49 years old, originally from Ampsin, and her companion, Josh Hilberman, 56, Belgian-American. They are professional tap dancers, she for 12 years, he for 30 years, and together they founded the Liège tap dance club which today welcomes on its floor a hundred members from 8 to 80 years old. It is around tap dancing that the couple met. Stéphanie attended the conservatory of Liège to become a musician. Pianist, violinist, she joined André Rieu's orchestra with which she toured the world for 23 years, 2,000 concerts to her credit! On December 18, 2020, she left the orchestra. "Tap dancing was a teenage dream," she says. "Twelve years ago, I decided to get started by taking advantage of the tours to train with the teachers I found in each country. It was during a tap dance workshop in Barcelona that I met Josh. He already had an impressive career in the discipline." Love went through it and in 2013, the American finally returned to Stéphanie's home, in Belgium, to live there permanently. The two internationally renowned artists have decided to live their passion to the fullest, together. Two years later, they launched their tap dance club in Liège, which quickly became a success. "We first rented the room, then we bought it and we made it a beautiful tool, with a large floating floor." This is where we give courses for all ages and all levels, internships, masterclasses, and meetings." Then in 2021, a new boost: the desire to set up a festival itches them. The couple want to highlight this little-known discipline and, with a little help, a "Rayonnement Wallonie" scholarship has enabled them to realize their dream, in 2022. "Thanks to the network that Josh has woven in the middle tap dancing, the big names from all over the world met at Grivegnée. It's quite incredible and unique. Such a festival does not exist anywhere else in the world." The event is therefore rescheduled this year, with six meetings, the first of which is today (January 21, 2023). At the same time, Stéphanie and Josh embark on the creation of tap dancing shows. "I produced one last year, around classical music, and Josh is preparing his solo show for November." Tap dancing, for the Ampsinoise, is a real love at first sight, a discipline "which is both dance and a musical instrument and which can take so many forms. Tap dancing is pure joy. It is not only entertaining, they have an important expressive potential." The public will be able to experience it during the Liège festival "with the chance that the room being intimate, we experience the tap dancing as close as possible artists, we feel the vibrations.”