One Love:Tabitha and Napoleon Take on Life, Love, and Hip-Hop Together (Dancer Magazine)

by Mary Staub — Aug 29, 2008, originally published in Dancer Magazine

The hip hop choreographers, teachers and directors Tabitha and Napoleon D’Umo, are in love – both with their work and with each other. Their steps and style are well-known to any commercial dance enthusiast. The two, a happy husband-and-wife team, have judged on television shows including “So You Think You Can Dance,” choreographed for “America’s Best Dance Crew,” hosted Rock the Reception, and worked on the tours of recording artists such as Celine Dion, Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera.

But their path to hip-hop prominence was far from planned. Tabitha first dabbled in dance in small studios in her hometown in New Jersey, where she learned her initial steps of ballet, jazz and tap. But hip-hop – especially in the form of a career – was still far from site.

“You couldn’t take hip-hop in any old dance studio at the time, so I only started doing hip-hop in college,” Tabitha, said during a few minutes in between rehearsals in a phone interview from California. “I always thought dance was something you did recreationally, as a hobby. Little did I know that opportunities would present themselves.”

She encountered hip-hop on the college dance team at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas where she was a communications major. It was there, too, that she met her future husband and partner, Napoleon D’Umo, pre-med at the time studying cellular and molecular biology. Napoleon, a California native who grew up in B-boy culture in the early 80s, had pretty much left dance behind until he saw what Tabitha had been learning in dance class – hip-hop.

“I said ‘I can do that’ and started taking class too,” Napoleon told me on the phone while driving to his next rehearsal in L.A.

Soon thereafter they made the cut for a hip-hop company, Culture Shock, and slowly began choreographing, teaching and team-teaching workshops for the company too. They taught classes at the local gym – at first for just $10 an hour – and choreographed industrials – at first for free. By graduation, though, they’d become the authority in all things hip-hop in Las Vegas, and it was then that they realized hip-hop might become a career.

Photo by Peter Randolph

“We both loved what we did, and when we graduated we said, ‘Why don’t we give it a shot?’” Tabitha said. “We rolled the dice, took a gamble and have been very blessed.”

They loved what they did, and each other, so they got married and moved to L.A. about 10 years ago to stake their claim in the more competitive world of West-Coast dance.

“It was like being a little fish in a big pond again,” Tabitha said. “We had to network all over again and learn how to swim in the big pond.”

They’ve been swimming – yes, sailing – along together ever since. With their influences reaching far beyond West-Coast venues to nationwide endeavors and more, what was a pond has since become an ocean. To observe the duo in action, you can watch any one of numerous networks and shows this fall. On TLC’s “Rock the Reception” they’ll be teaching husbands and wives to be (often with no previous dance training) to pull of some elaborate moves at their own wedding festivities. Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, catch their craft with professionals and travel to any one of Celine Dion’s stops on her current U.S. tour, co-choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon – from New York to Cleveland and beyond in September; from Sacramento to Vancouver and beyond in October; Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, Denver, and elsewhere in November; Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe in 2009.

One might wonder how two people could be partners, both in work and life, 24/7, with endless high-caliber commitments and choreographies traveling across the globe, and still be entirely enamored. But Tabitha and Napoleon seem to have made it work.

“We work together so much; it’s weird doing even an interview separately,” Napoleon said with a tone of admiration. “And when we teach we vibe off each other. I’ll start a joke, and Tabitha will finish it. I’ll start choreographing, and she’ll continue. We don’t plan it like that; it just happens.”

For a more immediate experience with the couple in action, they’ll be touring to a range of cities with "Shock the Intensive" and "Monster’s of Hip Hop." You might catch them in Atlanta, New York, Mobile, Pittsburgh, and beyond (for more details tours and events, go to the links below). In October and November, they should be headed to Canada (Toronto, Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver). There, they will be on faculty at "Coastal Dance Rage," where there will be a variety of offerings for both dance students and teachers. If you’d like to organize a more personalized encounter with Tabitha and Napoleon in your own studio, and get a feel for their working passion, you can contact them directly (bookings@nappytabs.com). In all likelihood, their enthusiasm will rub off. Even by phone, it’s easy to tell that the two of them are elated and enthusiastic about what they do and the people they do it with.

“We’ve been working hard for 10 years in this field. You can’t look for quick fix,” Napoleon said. “You can’t do this because you want to be famous or make money. You’ll have bad times and good times, and you have to do it because you’re passionate about it.”