During the month of August, Brian Sylvester Davis ’05—AKA Mr. Taptastic—performed at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater in After Midnight, a Broadway musical that celebrates the Harlem Renaissance with a live orchestra and song and dance numbers woven together by the prose of Langston Hughes. An actor, singer, dancer and storyteller, Brian was a finalist on HBO MAX’s Second Chance Stage and is the owner of The Taptastic Network LLC, a production company that curates presentations and workshops in tap, swing, and traditional jazz entertainment.

For Brian, who lives in The Bronx borough in New York City, performing in Seattle this summer was a homecoming. At age 9, he began tap dancing at Northwest Tap Connection, formerly TTAAPP Central. “It’s been 20 years since I've lived here, but I’ve been working on some things,” he said. “To be able to present at the 5th Avenue Theater doing what I started in Seattle, I don’t have a word for it. But maybe I do—it’s Taptastic!”

In the 5th Avenue Theater lobby on an afternoon before a performance, I chatted with Brian about his journey, including his time at UPrep.

What’s the story behind the moniker Mr. Taptastic?

That’s my stage name. When I was touring internationally as part of After Midnight, we were performing on the biggest ship in the world at that time and I started developing my own work. I thought, what could this feeling I get when I’m on the stage be called? It’s Taptastic: it’s like a modern-day version of copesetic. When I have an audience, I want them to be able to feel the same thing. I want them to be able to channel their emotions through what I’m doing on the stage. It became Mr. Taptastic when I was a busker during COVID in New York City. People would videotape me, and they'd call me the Taptastic man, and then it became Mr. Taptastic. It’s an amalgamation of all that I am and all that I do.

Take me back to your time at UPrep. Did you perform when you were a student?

Every single time I had the opportunity to perform I did; at Music day, at anything produced by Multicultural Student Alliance, at 8th grade graduation; at our high school graduation. In 8th grade, I was voted the most likely to be on Broadway—it’s in the yearbook! The performances are where I started workshopping who I am on stage without parameters. What is my voice? What do I want to say? And I began to become more comfortable on stage than sitting and talking with people at lunch because I could be unapologetically myself. We’re talking about 6th grade, 7th grade, and people seeing that wow, yeah, that child is a bit insecure, but once he gets on that stage, you can’t touch him. I had pride in what I was doing, and it also brought the school together. It was something that everyone could agree on and say, ‘wow this music is beautiful and what Brian is doing is making people happy.’

Actually, the Showtime at the Apollo ran a star search at Paramount Theatre and people from UPrep showed up to support me. We ended up winning and being televised in New York City. The school showed that whole performance in the new theatre, [Founder’s Hall].

How did your UPrep experience influence your growth and career path?

It was because of Ms. Prince, [the former college counseling director], that I was able to go to the University of the Arts [in Philadelphia]. I hadn’t figured out yet what I could do with my skill set and I was the first in my family to go off to college. I spent many hours in Ms. Prince’s office looking at schools all over the globe. That was scary at the time, but she told me I could do anything, all over the world. Years later, the actor Taye Diggs said, “You belong on stages all over the world!”

At UPrep, I was dealing with socioeconomic differences: most of the kids had a different reality than what I had, and yet I still had several outlets in the school. My outlets were mainly artistic. In art class, I built this beautiful sarcophagus [which now hangs in the Garfield Community Center]. When I didn’t have the words to express how I felt, I could put it into my art, and I could go into an Assembly and do something original. The solution was that my art was the pathway to my liberation. UPrep had the platform for me to develop it, and it had all the materials.

What do you carry with you from UPrep?

We were encouraged to be critical thinkers. I didn’t understand how big that was until I left Seattle, and I realized how great of an education I got at UPrep. I’m able to formulate my thoughts, whether I’m writing a simple essay or wording applications for grants. Being able to form my verbiage came from the studying we did at UPrep. We had to really cite our sources. Even internet sources had to be backed up by something substantial, and we had to form our own opinions based on a minimum of several sources from both sides of an argument. That may sound like something that’s minuscule but it’s not. It’s huge. So, when I began building something for myself, I thought, hey, maybe there isn’t an exact pathway for you to do this thing called Taptastic. It’s my LLC now, it’s my company. My critical thinking skills helped me come up with something new. Just like when I was at UPrep. No one said, build this Egyptian sarcophagus. It’s an idea that I had. And then I had all these materials to work with to see that idea through.

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