Headliners Dance Competition: Continuing and Growing the Family Legacy City by City

Three generations and almost four decades in, Headliners dance competition is still going strong. This season will bring new cities and a continued passion to fulfill its goals of providing an honest, high-quality dance competition that focuses on values, education, inclusivity, and encouragement.

“With so many competitions being bought out by investors, I’m so proud that here we are 38 years later,” CEO Shari Tomasiello says. “We’re still family-operated, and we’re not going anywhere.”

The Headliners Family

Founded by Tomasiello and her mother in 1989, Headliners has grown from hosting eight events in 1990 to a nationwide competition tour set to host events in 36 cities across 21 states in 2027. Today, Tomasiello and her three daughters proudly lead the business and carry on the family tradition. 

One of Tomasiello’s daughters, Rachel Hennin—who was born the same year Headliners was incorporated—began helping with the business at a young age, folding and stapling programs before taking on a variety of roles at the organization and working her way up the ranks. Today, she serves as Headliners’ chief operating officer and West Coast director.

“It’s one of my favorite things: the fact that we are three generations, the same family, all women,” Hennin says. “And I think, really more than anything, what it has allowed us to do is stay true to ourselves.”

Tomasiello says their family atmosphere extends to their staff and clientele, many of whom have remained with Headliners for decades. Building those long-lasting relationships with the dance community is how Hennin feels their business really makes an impact. 

“Because that’s what we are, a family,” she says. “And so the people that walk in the building are treated with the same respect and love.”

Gianna Tucker has experienced this culture firsthand as both a judge and the studio owner of Tucker Dance House in New Jersey. Not only did she feel cared for, welcomed, supported, and encouraged as a young judge starting out, but her students have also experienced a sense of belonging their first time attending Headliners—their first dance competition ever. Starting out as a public-school program with dancers who were less experienced and not traditionally trained, her students were nervous but were welcomed with open arms at Headliners and treated like everyone else. “They were nothing but family to us,” Tucker says.

Prioritizing Well-Rounded Judging

Beyond cultivating a family atmosphere, Headliners takes pride in providing quality judges’ critiques for dancers and dance teachers.

During the extensive hiring process for judges, applicants are reviewed on their technical qualifications, prior training, and teaching experience. They are also required to provide a series of critiques across varying levels and dance forms to demonstrate their ability to offer constructive criticism and use correct technical terminology. Once judges are officially hired, they must undergo additional reviews with the Headliners team before going on tour.

For Headliners, well-roundedness is a priority, so all judges are required to have experience in a variety of dance forms including tap and hip hop. “It’s great if you have ballet experience, of course,” Tomasiello says. “But if you can’t critique anything else, how does it help the dancer [who’s] a tapper?”

Another crucial part of the criteria is experience with children. “If you have no experience teaching children, I don’t think that you can properly critique at a dance competition,” Tomasiello says. She explains that judges need to understand “what it takes to get a child to the competition stage.” 

Hennin emphasizes the importance of balancing the human element of judging with the recognition that every child has varying levels of ability and goals. “We want to encourage them to grow. We want to encourage them to have fun. But we also want to give them the tools to get better,” she continues.

With experience as a public-school teacher, Tucker feels she can offer a unique perspective as a judge. “I feel like that lens has helped me provide criticism that meets the dancers where they’re at, and I know that’s what Headliners is really striving to do,” she says. And as a studio owner, too, Tucker says the critiques her own students have received from Headliners are “head and shoulders above every other event” they’ve ever attended.

More Cities, More Dancing

The Headliners family is continuing to expand across both the East Coast and the West Coast for the 2027 competition season. New cities include Anaheim and San Diego CA, Denver CO, Des Moines IA, Indianapolis IN, Kansas City MO, Long Island and Syracuse NY, Pittsburgh PA, Houston TX and Newport News VA.

Hennin says she takes pride in the overall experience they provide their clients, and she is excited to deliver it in more areas. “It is really a privilege,” she says. “It means we’re doing things the right way, and I think [expanding] was just a natural progression.”

For Dancers, by Dancers

Headliners continues to stay true to its original mission of providing a quality experience for dancers, families, and studios. According to Tomasiello, one of the organization’s greatest strengths is not only that it is a family but that it is a family of dancers, whose experience gives them a unique, empathetic lens into the competition industry.

With her mom’s experience as a studio owner, Tomasiello’s experience as a dance teacher and competition team director, and Hennin’s experience as a competitive dancer, Headliners draws on three generations of dance-industry perspective, alongside a staff largely made up of dancers. Tomasiello says that understanding—especially as the parent of a competitive dancer—has shaped the organization’s goal of creating a competition they would want to bring their own children to.

And that multigenerational legacy extends beyond the family itself. Over the past 30 years, Hennin says, she and her mom have witnessed dancers return as teachers, and teachers return as studio owners—Tucker being an example.

“I hold them very close to my heart because when I was 9 years old, Headliners was the first competition I ever went to,” Tucker says. “So the fact that that was my first one, and then that was my dance babies’ first one, and it was my first one judging, too—it’s so full circle.”

Ultimately, Headliners has always been about the people, Hennin says. She believes the relationships they’ve built with dancers, families, studios, judges, and staff over nearly four decades are why people continue to choose Headliners year after year.

For Tomasiello and her family, it’s more than a job—it’s a passion. “I’m just really proud of how we’ve continued the legacy,” she says.

To view tour dates and to preregister for the Headliners 2027 Competition Tour, click here.