"Rhythm in Motion" tappers bring their A game to Program B

L-r: Gabe Winn, Elizabeth Burke and Caleb Teicher
dance one of Teicher's Variations.
Photo: Vitaliy Piltser

Live and on video,
Chloe Arnold's hard-charging dancers
lay claim to fame and New York City
in Apartment #33...Where Dreams Are Made.
Photo: Vitaliy Piltser

L-r: Japan-born tap star Kazunori Kumagai
with vocalist Sabrina Clery and guitarist Masa Shimizu
in Kumagai's Excuse Me Mr.
In the face of discouraging world events, Kumagai says,
"music always helps me and inspires me to move forward."
Photo: Vitaliy Piltser

With his Rhythm in Motion programs, Tony Waag (American Tap Dance Foundation) has created an important new resource--space for the bumper crop of contemporary tap choreography of stylistic and thematic diversity. And he has found a congenial, if somewhat confined, home for it at The Theater at the 14th Street Y.

I missed this season's Program A. But, lordy, Program B--with works by Chloe Arnold, Felipe Galganni, Susan Hebach, Kazu Kumagai, Michela Marino Lerman, Caleb Teicher and Nicholas Young--was killer.

Introduced by Waag's appealing video montage of dancers at work and play in ATDF's studios, the show raced through ninety tightly-structured minutes of cool. Cool enough that even sand dancing--by a trio from Hebach's Nica's Dream crew--looked fresh enough to be the next street dance trend. Cool enough for me to take more interest in body percussion than I usually do (Young's intricate and social justice-minded WhiTeNoiSe). And even cool enough that the show's most traditional piece--Stardust, Marino Lerman's jazz duet with partner Dan Mitra--sustained its easygoing ways at length without wearing out its welcome.

More highlights included new pieces from Teicher and Kumagi.

Teicher has launched a study Glenn Gould's recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations, and Waag wove three of these trios--so far, he tells me, there are nine--throughout the Program B. Teicher, along with colleagues Elizabeth Burke and Gabe Winns, executes stark lines, delicate expressiveness and fiery speed with equal care. He looks poised to follow the acclaimed Michelle Dorrance into wider recognition as a striking performer and inquisitive dancemaker. Excuse Me Mr.--Kumagai's raw solo, accompanied in song and by guitar--plays the floor as a multi-voiced instrument and channel of soul. A modern rock star of tap, Kumagai holds true to its great Black ancestors while listening to his own empathic heart. And that will always be fresh and cool.

For information on future ATDF events, including this summer's Tap City festival (15th Anniversary, y'all!), click here.

Celebrating a world of tap in New York

The world is a stage. 

The stage is a world of entertainment.

Arthur Schwartz/Howard Dietz, "That's Entertainment"

Tony Waag, mayor of Tap City
at last year's Tap It Out event at Battery Park City
(photo by Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Thanks to Tony Waag's week-long Tap City summer fest, New Yorkers get to see and hear what a world of artists has made of the great American art of tap dance. The festival's "Tap Internationals" performance program--showcasing performers from the four winds and local talent working out to global rhythms--has long been my favorite Tap City feature. I only regret that we get but one chance per year to see it.

Last evening's show at Symphony Space has come and gone, taking with it these most engaging experiences:

Tembang Alit: a gem of a solo for Claudia Rahardjanoto (Chinese-Indonesian native of Germany), who played clear, discrete steps like tinkling bells against Cicilia Yudha's equally spare and delicate piano work

Kazu Kumagai
(photo by Leslie Kee)

Journey to the Soundscape: a solo for Japan's arresting Kazu Kumagai, an all-time favorite of mine, who channels dissonance and passion, taking tap to a stormy place beyond the familiar sunshine

Confirmation: another solo, this time splashed across space by Corey Hutchins (from Connecticut), a bold, original stylist with variegated musicality

Tap en Clave: crackling rumba riding atop taps by wiry live-wire Jaime Moran of Cuba

Not to forget El Guararey de Pastora, a handsome arrangement of song, body percussion and tap created by Max Pollak for his Rumba Tap ensemble, looking and sounding better than ever

And more:

Carson Murphy aglow, a model of confident ease and flow in the cast of Nicholas Young's Environments

Brenda Bufalino
(photo by Lois Greenfield)

Brenda Bufalino, master performer/educator at her best here, laying out fluttery, skimming tuneful steps and showing the kids how it's done

Speaking of kids, Susan Hebach and Tamii Sakurai have done a magnificent job of staging Molutsi Mogami's Izzici (Stomping Feet) for seventeen teen dancers from Tap City Youth Ensemble. The youngsters demonstrated high discipline and coordination--as individuals and as a group--in this demanding South African boot dance.

Which brings me to Tap Future. There is one. Watch American Tap Dance Foundation's students do their thing tonight at 8pm. Check in here, and hurry! Tickets go quickly.

But if you don't make it tonight, you don't even need tickets for tomorrow afternoon's Tap It Out extravaganza. Just head to Father Duffy Square in Times Square (map/directions) tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon to see a huge ensemble--160 dancers in all, at last count--performing 20-minute shows at noon, 1pm and 2pm.

For more about the American Tap Dance Foundation, click here.