Dorrance Dance: The Joyce does it again!

Josette Wiggan-Freund
plays Clara's Mother and Sugar Rum Cherry
in The Nutcracker Suite.
(photo: Matthew Murphy)

Dorrance Dance
The Joyce Theater
December 17-January 5

The Joyce closes out the 20-Teens with another tap triumph--this time, a three-week run by Dorrance Dance, the superb troupe headed by 2015 MacArthur Fellow Michelle Dorrance. Dorrance has been showing three separate programs, each crowned--I can find no better word for it--by the world premiere of The Nutcracker Suite, set to the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn arrangement of Tchaikovsky and designed like you've never seen it before.

The actual title--as rendered in the program notes, if not on the Joyce's website--is as follows:

WE PRESENT TO YOU: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE OR, A RHYTHMATURGICAL EVOCATION OF THE SUPER-LEVIATHONIC ENCHANTMENTS OF DUKE AND BILLY'S SUPREME ADAPTATION OF TCHAIKOVSKY'S MASTERPIECE THAT TELLS A TALE OF A MISUNDERSTOOD GIRL WHO KILLS A KING AND MEETS A QUEEN AND DON'T FORGET OOOO-GONG-CHI-GONG-SH'-GON-MAKE-IT-DADDY AND THAT IT AIN'T SO BAD AFTER ALL

Okay?

But we'll certainly call it The Nutcracker Suite for short.

In the program I saw (B), it followed the cool and spacious Elastic Time, also a world premiere, by the company's Associate Artistic Director, Nicholas Van Young, who is also a drummer, with sections of improvisation by the dancers and wonderful live music. Elastic Time and The Nutcracker Suite are like night and day. The first: abstract, rhythmically complex and transparent so that you marvel at the spare, dynamic architecture of its design and zoom in on its dancers' clean technical abilities, with Warren Craft bringing spunk and playfulness to an exciting tap suite that feels, nevertheless, to avoid the element of swing. The second: all swing all the time, winkingly queer, drenched in and bursting with color (lighting by Kathy Kaufmann, costumes by Andrew Jordan, scenic design by Christopher Marc--all of whom, like Dorrance, should clear a shelf for awards).

Dorrance's jazzy charm offensive starts right off centering a jitterbug couple and proceeds to woo us with a pocket-watch-hypnosis chorus line and a trio of Sugar Rum Blossoms (Elizabeth Burke, Carson Murphy and Maddie Murphy, led by Sugar Rum Cherry Josette Wiggan-Freund) who evoke Harlem showgirls. With its mayhem (seriously brawling rats) and bustling merriment (Russian trepak dance with some b-girl moves from Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie), this Nutcracker is non-stop, over-the-top entertainment giving good value for the price of your ticket.

Dorrance has the skillz. See this show, and you'll see why she could (and should, if desired) follow Camille A. Brown to Broadway. You will love The Nutcracker Suite, and you'll want to see it again and again. May this show become an annual tradition. Make it so, you geniuses at Dorrance Dance and The Joyce. Make it so.

Dorrance Dance continues through Sunday, January 5. For program and schedule information and ticketing, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street, Manhattan

(directions)

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Tap in the city: ATDF's "Rhythm in Motion" takes wing

American Tap Dance Foundation presented
Rhythm in Motion at ATDF's Tap City festival.
(photo: Amanda Gentile)

This year's Rhythm in Motion--part of the well-loved TAP CITY, the summer festival of all things tap--might be artistic director Tony Waag's best show ever. No trace of bloat, fluff or cornball, just expert, all-in, radiant power tap for nearly two hours. This is tap right on time and into the future. And diverse aesthetic styles with something for everyone--from lovers of Brazilian samba to Fats Waller to Steve Reich--and millions (they wish) served. Really, if you came away not finding something to cheer hard about here, I'm worried about you.

I regret that this show--presented at Symphony Space, long-time partner with Waag's American Tap Dance Foundation--ran only one night. People, can we do something about this sort of thing? The show I saw last night felt downright historic. Certainly, there were standout and breakout dance artists on the bill, and a viewer might even start contemplating...hmmm, yeah....some award nominations. Just sayin'. But, seriously, Bessies committee, start taking a wide-angled look at some of what's happening in tap these days.

I loved so much, but I will long remember the matchless, grounded, joyous confidence of Brinae Ali's Ndizzy Spellz; the always-surprising Caleb Teicher falling off his high heels then proceeding to kill it with yet one more unexpected strategy around tap and space and theatricality; and the all-women Full Circle Hardrocks's sharp cheerleader moves for Rokafella's The Drums Say Africa; and Lisa La Touche's Tap Phonics trio in the propulsive, offbeat Fragile. These artists do more than make tap "relevant" today; they offer no excuse to ignore tap.

Also serving some awesome tap on this program:Chloe Arnold and Robin Passmore, Christina Carminucci, Michelle Dorrance (with collaborating choreographer/improvisers Hannah Heiler, Melinda Sullivan and Josette Wiggan), Felipe Galganni, Charles Renato, Tami Sakurai, Delores Sanchez, Leo Sandoval, Samara Seligsohn and Nicholas Van Young.

Rhythm in Motion is closed, but there's one more event (Friday, July 13) you can enjoy before the season finishes up:

"TAP IT OUT" -- a free, public outdoor tap dance event at 1pm, 1:30pm, and 2pm at Father Duffy Square/Times Square (Broadway, West 46th Street to West 47th Street, 7th Avenue, Manhattan). Adult and pre-professional students create a chorus of hundreds of tapping feet. The contemporary percussion and movement "soundscape" promotes tap dance as pure music, while consciously deconstructing the basic elements that propel tap forward.

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Play the floor: Dorrance and Young at the Guggenheim

Michelle Dorrance
(photo: Works & Process at the Guggenheim/Jacklyn Meduga)

Audience waiting for the opening
Works & Process: Rotunda Project performance
at the Guggenheim Museum rotunda
(photo: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Despite what you might have read, tap dance is not on its last legs. Nor is it at death's door. Not while gifted makers like Michelle Dorrance and Nicholas Van Young still craft new ways to put its legacy and possibilities, its fun and glories in front of ever-expanding audiences like the ones that packed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum last night for three back-to-back performances for Works & Process: Rotunda Project, the museum's new residency and commissioning initiative.

The opening crowd, for the 6:30 show, was an eager and, it should be noted, overwhelmingly white audience--fairly easy to notice as people climbed and lined the museum's famous helical ramps, single-file, to view the museum's ground floor, the primary area for performance. Seeing the show required standing at the ramp's balconies for about 30 minutes plus the wait time before the show started.

According to a New York Times report, when Dorrance, Young and the troupe got their first go-round at the rotunda, they were shocked to discover its tap-unfriendly acoustics. Ooops.

Above: Claudia Rahardjanoto
Below: Dorrance and Young
(photos: Matthew Murphy)

Well, being smart people, they set to work on this formidable beast and, while perhaps not quite besting it, they created a playful sonic dialogue with it. From the opening boom, boom, boom of Dorrance's straddled drum, to angelic voices spiraling towards the skylight, to Young's body percussion and whistling, to the clack and rumble of batons on the floor, wooden boxes or balustrades, music was made by determined performers, and the audience got a lesson in music as a phenomenon of bodies in motion in space, any space. The charming Young even served as conductor, wordlessly training the audience in a complex score and drawing delighted laughter from us. Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie, the Bessie-nominated b-girl, paired with Matthew "Mega Watts" West to contribute hypnotic breakdance segments like jewels nestled inside settings offered by their colleagues and the gleaming white floor.

Gazing down on that floor for most of the performance gave watchers a view of dancers who resembled worker ants or a crisp marching corps as they executed elaborate geometry and braids of formations. Towards the end, the sixteen dancers strapped on tap shoes, bringing the thunder to platforms and planks of wood: We shall have tap!

And so, they shall. And so shall we.

Performers:

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie
Elizabeth Burke
Warren Craft
Donovan Dorrance
Michelle Dorrance
Michael Landis
Aaron Marcellus
Carson Murphy
Gabe Winns Ortiz
Claudia Rahardjanoto
Gregory Richardson
Leonardo Sandoval
Byron Tittle
Penelope Wendtlandt
Matthew "Mega Watts" West
Nicholas Van Young

Lighting: Kathy Kaufmann

Works & Process Rotunda Project: Michelle Dorrance with Nicholas Van Young has concluded. For updates on future events in the Guggenheim Works & Process series, click here.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Tap talks back: Jane Goldberg responds to Acocella review

Tap dancer and writer Jane Goldberg
(photo courtesy of the artist)

InfiniteBody welcomes tap's great champion Jane Goldberg for her response to a review of Dorrance Dance in The New Yorker by critic Joan Acocella.

*****

Joan Acocella’s December 5 review of Dorrance Dance (click here) offers up an unfortunate contradiction. After a generally complimentary review of the company’s recent season at The Joyce Theater, Acocella ends with the complaint that Michelle Dorrance choreographed only four full-length shows between 2013-2014 (only? really?) and hasn’t created enough new work. She points to Dorrance’s busy schedule as a dancer to explain this supposed deficit. She concludes, “Dorrance doesn’t look tired, but chances are she will, and so will her work, if she doesn’t sit down for a while.” Despite her evident love of dance, as a critic, Acocella either has no interest, or little, if any, understanding of what it means to be living the dance life. As someone who is both a dancer and a writer, I do.

We dancers need to make a living. This is a constant struggle, particularly for tap dancers. It is relevant that Michelle Dorrance, more than anyone, has employed more tap dancers of varying styles, as far as I can remember (and my memory is long). Dorrance does a lot of other choreography besides Dorrance Dance, and maintains this company with a seeming core, that changes often, and usually employs the talents of as many dancers as can deliver her complex and challenging work. Her full-length shows, featuring these dancers, require rehearsals and refreshing so that the shows are in tip-top shape when they arrive at the next venue. No doubt Acocella has seen the same Balanchine and Baryshnikov dances a zillion times.   If she loved tap dancing more she might not have practically rattled the death of tap after reviewing Brian Seibert’s tap history book. Acocella might get bored with only four shows in two years, but I saw The Blues Project three times and it just got deeper for me, with things I hadn’t noticed before, the way one discovers newness in a painting or in any of the lively arts.

Michelle Dorrance at Writing on Tap workshop (2012) above
and below with tap colleagues Derick K. Grant and Brenda Bufalino
(photos: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Dorrance’s work is diverse, collaborative, and far-reaching (amazing kathak/tap work; an interpretation of Martha Graham’s Lamentation; to name just two of many). Moreover, what is wrong with accepting every offer she gets while she’s “hot?”  Tap dancers don’t get the kind of venues ballet and even modern dancers get. We need to capitalize on offers when they arrive. Jacob’s Pillow certainly isn’t tired of Dorrance’s work, having hired her three years in a row, with two of the years presenting versions of the same work. The Blues Project when first presented at the Joyce lasted just a few nights – and it sold out. Because it is such a good piece, why not have it again and benefit both the 475- seat dance theater, as well as a blossoming choreographer and tap company? Consistent touring, which Acocella also complains about, gives Dorrance more access to more audiences, who might be inspired to go see more dance, enlarging the entire dance field. And, of course, frequent performing, usually a high, joyful, fulfilling, and giving experience for choreographer/dancers, keeps dancers working!

Dorrance is known for her generosity towards her dancers, paying them well and even before paying herself. She is also consistently generous in her recognition of her mentors and collaborators. If Acocella had seen Dorrance more than a couple of times, she would know that Dorrance has credited her North Carolina teacher Gene Medler in almost every panel discussion, concert program or public talk in which she was involved (including her recent appearance on Stephen Colbert). In the world of dance, rarely do I see anyone like Michelle Dorrance, who consistently goes back to her roots, to profusely credit others, and to celebrate her own good fortune. And her attributions are not done for reasons involving race, as Acocella implies. Her dancers are a diverse group brought together because they have the feet and attitude Dorrance clearly admires. In a world of schadenfreude, it is telling that I have heard no envious talk about Dorrance winning the prized MacArthur Genius Award. Only delight and pride from her fellow tappers.

--Jane Goldberg

Jane Goldberg
(photo: Jamie Laworitz Sherman)

Jane Goldberg is a “rara avis”: a dancer who is also a writer. She has been one of the most prolific voices in the field of tap dancing for the past three decades.

In 1972, after graduating as a political science major from Boston University, she saw the dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and was soon studying tap dancing. She began ferreting out many of the remaining entertainment greats of the 20th century. She became good friends with the late Gregory Hines, the actor/singer/tap dancer, as well as his chronicler.

By the 1980s, Goldberg had apprenticed herself to many of the old hoofers, while at the same time, interviewing and documenting their work. These classic jazz men were at the time living virtually “underground,” considered practitioners of a “dying,” or at best, “lost” art form. At least, that was the official lore Goldberg heard about this uniquely American art.

Determined to prove the two myths wrong, Goldberg began teaching and was only a few steps ahead of her students in her Bleecker Street basement. The experimental choreographer/singer/writer, Meredith Monk, was in her first class, and Monk sent many apostate modern dancers Goldberg’s way. Tap’s universal appeal attracted Japanese scholars, doctors, lawyers and “closet hoofers” to Goldberg’s underground quarters as well. She employed her newly developed “talking feet”, to pass down great steps and secret recipes from the originators.

As artistic director of Changing Times Tap, a non-profit preservation, promotion, and performing entity, begun in 1979, Goldberg began teaching at New York University, and giving workshops and master classes to college and serious dance students. Her company produced the first international festival, By Word of Foot in 1980, at the renowned NYC Village Gate. Her acclaimed memoir, “Shoot Me While I’m Happy: Memories from the Tap Goddess of The Lower East Side” with introduction by Gregory Hines, comes with a bonus DVD which highlights this celebration of teaching.

Some of her archives reside at The New York Public Library’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as part of the Gregory Hines Collection. Her personal archives, “Jane Goldberg’s Wandering Shoes, Tap (h) istory, Tip Top Tapes, Tapalogues, Tapology and Tapperabilia” is living testament to the future of tap.

Known as “the hoofer with angst”, Goldberg has performed her comedy/tap act, Rhythm & Schmooze, "topical tap with running commentary over the feet,” in countless jazz, contemporary, and experimental venues throughout The United States, such as The Village Vanguard in NYC, The Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and Harvard University in Boston. She is the recipient of two Fulbright Scholarships to India where she performed her highly idiosyncratic program throughout the subcontinent.

A Washington D.C. native, Goldberg spent her formative years as an investigative reporter and studying modern dance in D.C., Maryland, and Boston. She lives with the painter Owen Gray in New York City.

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And the 2015 Bessies go to...!

With deep regret, I missed this year's Bessies celebration at the Apollo, as I'm struggling with the horrible cold that's going around. But I'm absolutely delighted to share this list of winners. Congratulations to everyone!

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Hosts with the mostest, Carmelita Tropicana and Jock Soto
on The Apollo stage
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu)

The 2015 NY Dance and Performance Awards

Lifetime Achievement in Dance

Steve Paxton

For a relentless curiosity into the possibility of movement, from the redefinition of modern dance with the movers who gathered at Judson Church in the 1960s, to the development of contact improvisation now practiced around the world, and for his ongoing rigorous and surprising choreographic investigations.


Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance

Movement Research

For nearly four decades as a creative incubator for innovation, enquiry, and dialogue. For providing a range of platforms to disseminate ideas about dance, art, and civic life via its classes, publications and weekly performance gatherings. For championing the importance of artistic process.


Outstanding Production

Dorrance Dance with Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely for The Blues Project at The Joyce Theater

For a symphonic dialogue between a stellar company of tap artists and a groundbreaking blues band; a true fusion of dance and music, expanding the boundaries of two great American traditions.


Outstanding Production

David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group for I Understand Everything Better, Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory

For creating a mysterious and whimsical world in which to explore the dual devastations of personal loss and public destruction, taking the audience on a visceral journey through internal and external storms.


Outstanding Production

Justin Peck for ‘Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes, New York City Ballet

For a bracing new interpretation of a well-known score, wiping it clean of prior associations and using it as the springboard for an entirely new ballet marked by wit, surprise, poignant intimacy, and robust ensemble energy.


Outstanding Production

Roger Guenveur Smith for Rodney King at BRIC Arts Media

For a powerful and timely performance using gesture, voice, and historical document to link the personal tragedy of Rodney King's life to our national tragedies of racism and police brutality.
For extending that conversation into the street in an improvised post-show town hall that evolved into a peaceful demonstration in reaction to the Eric Garner case unfolding in New York City.


Outstanding Revival

Alexei Ratmansky for The Sleeping Beauty, American Ballet Theatre

For recapturing the spirit and style of Petipa from 19th-century ballet notation starting with simple steps to reconstruct that world’s ideas about movement, musicality, aesthetics, and storytelling in dance.


Sustained Achievement in Performance (posthumous)

Lawrence Cassella for his work with Ivy Baldwin

For the ability to be smooth, strong, fast, fearless, dangerously sexy, and bizarrely hilarious. For more than a decade of creation in a richly intertwined collaboration with choreographer Ivy Baldwin.


Sustained Achievement in Performance

Lauren Grant for her work with the Mark Morris Dance Group

For nearly two decades’ work gracing Mark Morris’ choreography with invigorating spontaneity, expansive phrasing, and robust musicality. For bringing to life an extensive and varied repertory, embodying the essence and individual tone of each work.


Sustained Achievement in Performance

Amar Ramasar for his work with New York City Ballet

For his natural ease and contemporary presence on the classical stage. For his ongoing contributions to a wide range of new ballet work, and for his sensitivity and skill in the demanding and sometimes unseen art of partnering.


Outstanding Performance

Ryoji Sasamoto in OQ by Kota Yamazaki at Japan Society

For his mastery and presence in a dance palace filled with extraordinary movers. For a never-ending flow of movement merging an ingrained sense of lock and pop with a contemporary sense of fluid release.


Outstanding Performance

Melissa Toogood for her work in the 2014−15 season with Pam Tanowitz, Kimberly Bartosik, Merce Cunningham, Rashaun Mitchell, Stephen Petronio, and Sally Silvers

For dancing so precise and fluid, elegant and electric, it captivates the viewer in each work in which she appears. For committing herself so completely to enhancing and transforming the vision of an astounding number of unique choreographers.


Outstanding Sound Design

Tei Blow for I Understand Everything Better by David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory

For a virtuosic live audio performance mixing recorded sounds, percussive rhythms, a live mic, and spinning vinyl to transport the audience from the mountains of Japan to the hurricane-ravaged shores of New York.


Outstanding Visual Design

Geoff Sobelle, Steven Dufala, Christopher Kuhl, Nick Kourtides, Jamie Boyle, and Rachel McIntosh for The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle at BAM Fisher

For creating an immersive environment built from the material debris of an individual life. For sparking curiosity in the audience about the need, meaning, and weight of their own lives’ objects.


As previously announced, the 2015 Emerging Choreographer Award was given to Storyboard P for fusing various styles of hip-hop with elements of modern and jazz dance, creating a cinematic choreographic vision for new dance narratives and abstract movement-based works. The 2015 Juried Bessie Award was given to Pavel Zuštiak for his poetic layering of movement and visual imagery, and conceiving of the stage space as a decentralized world in which the corporeal body is the focus and canvas for a wide range of human expression.


The full list of nominees can be found at: http://bessies.org/2015-nominees-announced/.


2014−15 Bessie Committees

The Bessie Awards Steering Committee, responsible for setting policy and providing oversight of the Bessie Awards throughout the year, is comprised of Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Lane Harwell, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Stanford Makishi, Carla Peterson, Laurie Uprichard, and Martin Wechsler.

The Bessie Awards Selection Committee consists of Nolini Barretto, Diana Byer, Kim Chan, H.T. Chen, Blondell Cummings, Nancy Dalva, Andrew Dinwiddie, Maura Donohue, Simon Dove, Boo Froebel, Laurel George, Caleb Hammons, Zhenesse Heinemann, Iréne Hultman, Robert LaFosse, Matthew Lyons, Nicole Macotsis, Caridad Martinez, Harold Norris, Nicky Paraiso, Mathew Pokoik, Susan Reiter, Rokafella, Walter Rutledge, Sue Samuels, Philip Sandstrom, Gus Solomons Jr., Sally Sommer, Risa Steinberg, Carrie Stern, Kay Takeda, David Thomson, Muna Tseng, Kay Turner, Tony Waag, Edisa Weeks, Ryan Wenzel, Adrienne Westwood, and Elizabeth Zimmer.


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ABOUT THE BESSIES

The NY Dance and Performance Awards have saluted outstanding and groundbreaking creative work in the dance field in New York City for 31 years. Known as “The Bessies” in honor of revered dance teacher Bessie Schönberg, the awards were established in 1984 by David White at Dance Theater Workshop. They recognize exceptional work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. Nominees are chosen by a 39-member selection committee comprised of artists, presenters, producers, and writers. All those working in the dance field are invited to join the NY Dance and Performance League, as members participate in annual discussions on the direction of the awards and nominate members to serve on the selection committee. www.bessies.org

MacArthurs for Michelle Dorrance,Ta-Nehisi Coates, Basil Twist

MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners for 2015 Are Announced
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, September 29, 2015

Good medicine from Reagon and Dorrance at Lincoln Center

Toshi Reagon (standing) and some members of BIGLovely
at Lincoln Center Out of Doors at Damrosch Park
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

All of your friends were at The Blues Project last night at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, right?

I know that's right.

And they all tweeted and posted to Facebook and text messaged and Instagrammed. And maybe you were there, too. Most likely, you were. Maybe crowding that space between the seats and the stage, for the first part of the show, and dancing your ass off. So you already know what a celebration that was.

And that's how it goes these days. You don't need me to tell you. You probably don't need any critic.

And why would you need us anyway, since we're talking Toshi Reagon and Michelle Dorrance? And Derick K. Grant and The Empress Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards? And Juliette Jones? And Allison Miller? If the collaboration between musician Reagon (with her band BIGLovely) and tap dance wiz Dorrance (with her Dorrance Dance troupe) hasn't become a sure bet by now, I don't know what has.

Opening the show with her crew, Reagon first called the audience to attention. Basically, she said everything boils down to the environment. Mess that up, and it doesn't matter who you are or where you are: We're all royally screwed. Don't vote for anyone who doesn't get that, who doesn't have environmental concerns top of mind.

"Taking care of the planet will unite all of us past our differences," she said before launching into a clap-along environmental anthem with folk and gospel gleaming through, silver and gold. "No tears will fall, no battle will call/You will miss the world you know...." The set moved on to propulsive, open-throated rock, irresistibly sinuous reggae, and much more--all the confident, stylistic interweaving for which Reagon is noted.

She got folks, young and old, up on their feet. "Don't you need to jump up and down? This is the medicine you need for the hard week we've been through," she said, as we thought about Sandra Bland, about Lafayette. "It's been a horrible week."

For medicine, she and her band brought "sunshine, still shining in the pouring rain," an optimism practiced in music without borders. In the second part of the evening, Dorrance teamed up with, and matched, Reagon and BIGLovely with her own cool blend of old and new across styles, races and genders.

The Blues Project--a suite of ensemble and solo pieces created by Dorrance, Reagon, Grant and Sumbry-Edwards--might be one of the most efficient ways to introduce your newbie friends to concert dance of any kind or to teach them, through subliminal means, what tap's all about. For sure, this is smooth, stress-free education at its finest, right in the middle of pure, nonstop entertainment by dancers giving their best. You see and hear the roots of tap in the African-Irish encounter; the virtues of both polished choreography and expressive improvisation; the comfort of the familiar paired with the kick of new angles and accents and timing; the pleasures of both refined, minimal details and expansive, rip-roaring energy. No filler, and not a bit of cornball to muck it up.

If you are one of the two or three people who did not make it to Damrosch Park last evening, make sure that you find your next chance to see the Reagon-Dorrance collaboration in action. Take your medicine.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors continues through August 9. For all the details and a schedule of events--from Joe Bataan's boogaloo to Afro-punk and Judy Collins--click here.

Alpert Award-winning choreographers featured online

Irene Borger, who directs the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, has sent me the following note about the Alpert Award's enhanced Web presence and extensive information about Alpert winners in the field of dance. Click the provided links for entry to this treasure house.

Tap artist Michelle Dorrance
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

What do some of today’s most compelling choreographers say about their work? Who – and what – has inspired them? What’s the place of collaboration in their practice? How do they view their lineage? What questions are they asking? What’s hard?

Right here: a substantive resource – the Herb Alpert Award website - filled with performance videos, exclusive interviews with choreographer-performers Nora Chipaumire, Michelle Dorrance, Susan Rethorst, Jess Curtis, and Julia Rhoads.

Michelle Dorrance, HAAIA in Dance 2014

Julia Rhoads, HAAIA in Dance 2013

Nora Chipaumire, HAAIA in Dance 2012

Jess Curtis, HAAIA in Dance 2011

Susan Rethorst, HAAIA in Dance 2010

The site itself invites questions: How does one represent an artist’s work? What makes a good interview? How do you organize text, images and time-based documentation to create useful and compelling web pages?

How does receiving a $75,000 award affect an artist? Watch here.

For a look at other risk-taking mid-career Herb Alpert winners working in Film/Video, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, click here.

Play the floor: ATDF's "Rhythm in Motion"

Well, Tony Waag did say that American Tap Dance Foundation's spring series, Rhythm in Motion--at least, Program A of it--would be edgy. And edgy, it was. Also, the rest of what he said: "hopeful, passionate, experimental, lovely...."

"[Tap dancing] can take us somewhere we don't expect," he said. "It's no longer nostal-gyah--though we do love that."

ATDF's Tony Waag at Tap It Out 2012
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

At the modest Theater at the 14th Street Y, the first performance of Program A opened with a clever behind-the-scenes film by Waag, featuring a montage of breathless, high-powered tapping overlaid with "Synchronicity" by The Police. That led to an hour or more of all-the-way live tap designed with 21st Century tastes in mind--works by Nicholas Young, Michelle Dorrance, Chloe Arnold, Jason Samuels Smith, Lisa La Touche and Derick K. Grant, each making a case for tap's continued relevance as hardcore skill and art.

You might mistake Young, a tall, strapping Texan, for a country-western star, but he's a tapper through and through and, as shown here, an emerging choreographer of growing confidence. Thank you Forest, dedicated to the sound technology inventor, employs an array of tap surfaces wired for sound as he and an all-women crew--Elizabeth Burke, Michela Marino Lerman, Carson Murphy, Demi Remick and Samara Seligsohn--fire up the feet to play the floor with impressive accuracy, speed, force and assertive design.

Dorrance's bluesy improvisatory solo with guitarist Darwin Deez, Deez and Deez, is pure magic in all the little framed moments of wonder. The dancer holding firm as she drags the silver blade of her heel against the floor; catching the guitar's spare lines of sound at odd angles and whipping her lines all around and around them; pulsing waves of movement through the length of her lanky body; dazzling us with her killer feet then looking straight at the guitarist as if to say, "What you got now?" As an ensemble choreographer and director, too, she's the genuine article, able to transfer what's great about her personal style--loose, earthy, full-bodied insouciance--onto others with no artificial aftertaste. Last night's superb cast of She's Alright included Burke, Murphy, Remick, Young, Megan Bartula and Caleb Teicher, and you can tell she has inspired them.

Arnold's two pieces for her exuberant troupe Apt 33 emphasized hard-charging, tight arrangements to popular urban music ("So Fine" by Jamaican reggae star Sean Paul and "Not Afraid" by Eminem). Samuels Smith's solo + ensemble, Acasmellyah--its title, a tapper's play on the word acapella--is so masterfully sharp, finely complex, roaring in sound and mesmeric in effect that it's hard to believe that Rhythm in Motion wouldn't just stop there and let us stagger home.

Derick K. Grant
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

But there was more to come. La Touche with musical collaborator/dancer Sean Jackson and fellow dancers Brittany DeStefano and Karissa Royster brought We Used to Hold, partly set to an Erykah Badu song, innovative in staging and sound and with occasional subtlety and sexiness. Grant's Buzzcut Season, using the Lorde song, scatters a roiling mess of dancers in school uniforms around the space. Now and again, the galloping, spinning crowd briefly, ingeniously parts to throw focus on one or a few of its members in a floating narrative of high school life and love.

Program B will include works by Gregory Hines (staged by Barbara Duffy), Brenda Bufalino, Cartier Williams, Michela Marino Lerman, Max Pollak, Susan Hebach, and the capoeira-inspired Fuga by Felipe Galganni.

Rhythm in Motion continues through Saturday. Remaining shows include tonight (Program A at 7pm and 9:30pm), Thursday (Program A at 7pm), Thursday (Program B at 9:30pm), Friday (Program B at 7pm and 9:30pm) and Saturday (Program B at 3pm with a Tap Talk Back and 7pm).

For Rhythm in Motion tickets, click here.

For information on Sunday's Celebrating Gregory! fundraiser with guest host Bill Irwin, click here.

The Theater at 14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street (at 1st Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Alpert Award winners announced. Congrats to Michelle Dorrance!

Michelle Dorrance
(photo by Christopher Duggan)

Philanthropists Herb Alpert and Lani Hall Alpert
Herb Alpert Foundation
(photo by Louis Oberlander)

Congratulations to New York-based dancer-choreographer Michelle Dorrance, one of five winners of the 2014 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, for her exemplary, innovative work in tap dance.

To read more about this award and Dorrance's fellow awardees--Deborah Stratman (film), Matana Roberts (music), Annie Dorsen (theater) and Daniel Joseph Martinez (visual arts), click here.

Where the blues brings joy: Dorrance and Reagon at the Schomburg

Tap maverick Michelle Dorrance
in The Blues Project, a collaboration
with singer-composer Toshi Reagon (rear, right),
curator of the Schomburg's Women's Jazz Festival

The Women's Jazz Festival, now in its 21st annual presentation by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, got off to an exciting start with the New York premiere of The Blues Project in the sold-out Langston Hughes Auditorium. Given its world premiere last summer at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the production is the marriage of two top-notch artistic entities--Dorrance Dance, the tap ensemble led by Bessie-winning choreographer Michelle Dorrance, and Toshi Reagon's marvelous band, BIGLovely. And if that's not enough, how about Derick K. Grant and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards adding their choreography and star-power?

Dorrance Dance in action
Up front: Elizabeth Burke (l) and Nicholas Van Young
Far left: Derick K. Grant
Center: Christopher Broughton
(photo: Bob Gore)

L-r: Claudia Rahardjanoto, Michelle Dorrance,
Demi Remick, Elizabeth Burke
and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards
(photo: Bob Gore)

The Blues Project opens with the steady BOOM-THUMP, BOOM-THUMP of Allison Miller's drumming. Dancers--dressed as if for a summery country romp--first creep out from the wings then quickly unpack Dorrance's signature moves: loose-limbed, broad, pelting, the entire body activated and engaged in addressing space. They charge and skim and gobble the stage in just a few happy bites. It's a distinctly American, idealistically American look and feel--indomitable, optimistic, on the upswing and culturally integrated--and one that Reagon's BIGLovely supports throughout the hour-long show with its own buoyant eclecticism, from blues to bluegrass, from swing and rockabilly to hard rock. The tightly edited hour--each cleanly-arranged number following close upon its predecessor--never strains a viewer's interest.

Some dancemakers go astray in their effort to prove that tap is respectably choreographic, not just improvisatory. Dorrance, though, demonstrates that she can more than handle the challenge of fielding a big, purposeful group in space and making an ensemble look intricately sharp and never, never ever cornball. No matter what era of dance or music she drops into, she and her talented and disciplined dancers come up with a vitalizing response, as do Reagon and her musicians. I might wish for fewer ensemble moments in The Blues Project--that's just me, folks--but the thrilling solos eventually balance things out, and then some.

Grant's solo is a model of workmanship of the feet akin to fine brushstrokes in the painting of a master, strokes that make you lean forward to look and gasp. His technique is breathtaking. Sumbry-Edwards brings authority and, yet continuous surprise, concentrating hard as if dance is a most solemn duty, and that's because it is. She renders herself transparent so that history flows through her. Her solo is--I'll just say it this way--populated. Reagon's spiritual, soulful "There and Back Again" (2010) lays out the mesh that Dorrance's solo will embroider in her deep-listening, thoughtful way, one of the most inspired and inspiring pieces I've ever seen her dance. This youthful dancer and choreographer truly represents tap's historic and enduring through line and signals its potential.

Dorrance Dance: Megan Bartula, Christopher Broughton, Elizabeth Burke, Michelle Dorrance, Eboni Edwards, Derick K. Grant, Claudia Rahardjanoto, Demi Remick, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Caleb Teicher, Byron Tittle, Nicholas Van Young, Ali Dietz

BIGLovely: Toshi Reagon (vocals, acoustic guitar), Adam Widoff (electric guitar), Ganessa James (electric bass), Juliette Jones (violin), Allison Miller (drums and percussion)

For information on upcoming Women's Jazz Festival events, now through March 31 at the Schomburg, click here. Hurry! Tickets go fast!

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Blvd, Manhattan

(map/directions)

Checking out Allison Miller. (Thanks, Toshi!)

When I said I wasn't sure I knew who Allison Miller is, Toshi Reagon dropped this video into her Facebook Timeline. And that's what friends are for.

BTW, things get even better: Miller, Reagon and the incredible, Bessie-winning tap artist Michelle Dorrance are cooking up something together for this summer at Jacob's Pillow! See here.

Michelle Dorrance to be honored at the 2013 Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

Michelle Dorrance (left) with Brenda Bufalino at Writing on Tap forum in 2012 (photo by Eva Yaa Asantewaa) 

New York's Michelle Dorrance--a Bessie Award winner, acclaimed for her fresh, innovative approach to tap dance choreography and performance--is the winner of the 2013 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award. The award--to be presented by Jacob's Pillow Executive and Artistic Director Ella Baff at the festival's opening gala on Saturday, June 15--comes with a $25,000 prize with no strings attached. She is the first tap artist to receive this award.

Baff comments, “With this year’s Award, we recognize a hugely talented young artist who is experimenting with new ideas and moving the art of tap forward.  We are also honoring the great American art form of tap, which has created some of the best dance and music-making ever.”

Dorrance will perform at the Gala with singer Aaron Marcellus. Her ensemble, Dorrance Dance, will perform at this summer’s festival, July 24-28, in the Doris Duke Theatre, accompanied by award-winning singer, musician and composer Toshi Reagon and band. Past recipients of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award include Crystal Pite, Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones.

Read more about the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award here.

For complete information about the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, click here.

Get rhythm!

American Tap Dance Foundation

presents

Rhythm in Motion

Friday, March 22 and Saturday, March 23
Two shows each night: 7pm and 9:30pm

Sunday, March 24, 3pm

An evening of new work by New Yorks finest tap dancers and choreographers including Brenda Bufalino, Michelle Dorrance, Derick K. Grant, Kazu Kumagai, Max Pollak, Lynn Schwab, the Tap City Youth Ensemble and Cartier Williams, directed and curated by Tony Waag

Ticket information

The Theater at the 14th Street Y

344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Jason Samuels Smith's tip of the taps to Charlie Parker

Read my Dance Magazine review of Jason Samuels Smith's tap show at The Joyce Theater. Click here.

And ignore that photo. All that hair is gone now. New summer look, I guess!

Great launch for CDWNM with "Writing on Tap"

Brenda Bufalino

Derick K. Grant

Bufalino with Michelle Dorrance

All photos (c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I kept wanting someone to pinch me. Was I really in a studio with Brenda Bufalino, Derick K. Grant and Michelle Dorrance? See the photos above for evidence that this wasn't just a dream.

And after this intrepid trio--plus tap historian/author Constance Valis Hill and renowned pianist/arranger Frank Owens--schooled a congenial group of dance writers, tap dancers, other kinds of dancers and tap fans about issues in the journalistic coverage of tap, they quickly broke out their tap shoes and showed us why us writers really need to step up our game.

I guess when you spend a few months focusing on the minutiae of an event--in this case, a collaboration between Tony Waag's venerable American Tap Dance Foundation and my new Collective for Dance Writing and New Media--it's easy to lose sight of the larger picture. This, ladies and gentlemen, turned out to be a momentous occasion.

And not just because of our stellar guests and their dancing.

Writing on Tap succeeded because it offered a place for writers and artists to meet, share information and learn from one another in an atmosphere of respect and fun. Tap dancers have many grievances with dance critics--everything from our lack of expertise in music (after all, tap dancers are musicians) to our inability to recognize tap-historical allusions in contemporary tap choreography to just plain indifference to the form and dismissal of it as an art. The tap field hasn't had the cohesion necessary to act in its own behalf and, if necessary, raise a ruckus. But what we saw on Saturday afternoon was the beginning of an important dialogue that could make a difference--particularly in the future work of today's up-and-coming dance writers.

More and more, I want to facilitate and participate in spaces like this one and efforts like this.

And that's a good thing, since our host, our guests and our participants are all clamoring for more of them.

So Collective for Dance Writing and New Media will find a way to keep them coming. Keep in touch with us through our site. Like us on Facebook, follow @CollectiveDWNM on Twitter and put us in your Google+ circles. In coming months, we will be inviting you to get involved in our activities and help this organization grow and do more excellent work.

We hope you'll join us!

Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Founder
Member, Executive Committee
Collective for Dance Writing and New Media

Michelle Dorrance and Frank Owens join "Writing on Tap"

Hot off the taps: I'm pleased and honored to announce that jazz pianist Frank Owens and Bessie Award-winning dancer-choreographer Michelle Dorrance will be joining the stellar lineup of tap experts for Writing on Tap on June 23. And reservations are going fast!

It doesn't get much better than this. Join us at American Tap Dance Center on June 23!

Information

RSVP (required)

Dance Roundup: Politics, Uganda, Field grants

Politics and the Dancing Body, an exhibition of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, focuses on the work of 20th Century choreographers who used dance as force for social justice, human rights and cultural diplomacy, from World War I through the Cold War. Open now through July 28. For more information, click here.

Spirit of Uganda returns to New York City, bringing a dynamic troupe of young drummers and dancers from the East African nation.

Spirit of Uganda combines cultural African traditions with contemporary concerns and addresses real life issues – issues that have affected the children personally – such as devastation in the wake of HIV/AIDS, poverty and war.

See this acclaimed company perform at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, March 2 (8pm) and 3 (2pm and 8pm). For information and ticketing, click here.

Congratulations to New York choreographers Luciana Achugar, Rachel Cohen and Michelle Dorrance, all winners of The Field Dance Fund grants. Learn more about The Field and this program here.

Collective for Dance Writing and New Media will meet twice in March at the Gibney Dance Center (Monday, March 5, 6pm and Thursday, March 8, 2pm). Get involved and help create the future of writing about dance. For more information and to RSVP (required), click here.

Startin' somethin'

Judy Hussie-Taylor's Danspace Project is going all out, busting out the pleasure, the humor, the joy. No shame in this, my friends, because in godawful times--which is definitely where we find ourselves now--we need to hold on to what's best about us as humans, or what's the point?

Dancer-choreographers Michelle Dorrance and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards are sharing a show--curated, with wicked glee, by David Parker--that explodes St. Mark's Sanctuary with the excitement of tap dance. I cannot say for sure that tap dance has never shown up at Danspace Project but, certainly, it has never shown up there quite like this.

So, first reason to go, if you can get in: Parker and his artists are making dance history. Second reason: If you don't know these two women--and, if so, where the hell have you been?--it's time to catch up with them. They be slammin'. There's Sumbry-Edwards, a paragon of authority and earthy glamour, the woman who taught Michael Jackson to tap dance and pays tribute to him here with her Blood on the Dance Floor ensemble. The punk-geek Dorrance, with her stylistic penchant for all things goofy, off-kilter and marginal, brings a fresh explorer's vision to dance-making within an art form with closely held traditions, and she's got serious chops as a dancer, too.

I insist that you become acquainted with young dancers like Cartier Williams (a mighty bantam) and Caleb Teicher (oh, my...what grace, what ease, what potential stardom) as well as rangy, mile-high Ryan P. Casey and his wonderful partner Elena Steponaitis who dance Dorrance's rag duet in Dorrance's a petite suite.

Tickets are sold out, but there's a waiting list! Check it out here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
Second Avenue and Tenth Street, Manhattan

Jason's angels rock The Kitchen

Let's keep this short and sweet, since you don't really have a lot of time to get tickets for Charlie's Angels, the tap dance production created by Jason Samuels Smith, given its New York premiere at The Kitchen. Curator Rashida Bumbray--who taps herself and has brought a wonderful tap jam to The Kitchen--seems intent on making this home for experimental arts a place to see a classic art swing out its juiciest experiments. Well, Samuel Smith's experiment--after three years in development--turns out to be a doozy.

The angels in question are celebrated tap dynamos Chloé Arnold, Michelle Dorrance and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, and the Charlie in question is Parker. The mission? To faithfully tap out the notes and rhythms in Parker's bebop, no matter how devilishly fast and complex.

Do they do it? And how! They get it done, note for note, and with Arnold's irrepressible radiance, Dorrance's punkish footwork, and Sumbry-Edwards's mastery and elegance. And they do it, mainly, in high heels--backwards, forwards, side-to-side.

Highlight's include the trio's powerhouse opening ("Donna Lee"), freer-swinging audience faves like "Half Nelson (original take 2)" and "Cheryl," Sumbry-Edwards's flowing "Embraceable You," and the amazing closer, "Salt Peanuts."

The show also boasts excellent lighting by Sue Samuels, intricate, imaginative costuming by Gingie McLeod/Dindi Designs, spoken word by Craig 'muMs' Grant, and the delicious saxophone playing of Stacy Dillard in evocative interludes. Just under an hour, it moves so swiftly that, when it's over, you'll be left blinking in amazement.

So, get over there! There are two shows today: 3pm and 8pm. Here's the info/ticket link.