[On March 14, 2019, Dorrance Dance performed Jungle Blues, Three to One, and Myelination at the Tyron Festival Theatre, Krannert Center for Performing Arts. Below is a response to the event by Charles Milton Maybee (Dance).] Dorrance Dance Reflection Written by Charles Milton Maybee “Dorrance Dance invites you to share your energy by applauding, swaying, humming, and seat dancing. This is a reminder that you are not at the ballet! Now please sit back, relax, and enjoy the performance.” This was the opening announcement for Dorrance Dance’s concert at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on March 14, 2019. A bold statement that attempts to make a distinction between the way one might behave at a tap dance show versus the way one might act at the ballet. As a life-long tap dancer, I can attest that tap dance shows are inherently noisy. Not just because of the literal tap dancing on stage, but because of the ways that audiences become sonically and physically engaged with the work at hand. The wall between audience and performer breaks down as everyone becomes a participant, whether that’s assuming a role as a performer or cheerleader. I can see how it might stand in contrast to attending an event like The Nutcracker or Swan Lake. But I would argue that people hoot and holler the same for both types of events in their own ways, especially as soloists take to the stage to show off virtuosic feats of the body: 32 fouetté turns versus doing splits across the stage. I do not believe Dorrance is making the distinction that she thinks she is, which is odd considering that some of her career highlights in the last couple years include setting work on the American Ballet Theater and Martha Graham Dance Company. For someone who is stating that she wants to make tap dance distinct from other genres, Dorrance seems eager to blur the lines between them. This concert is definitive proof of that. [caption id="attachment_1890" align="aligncenter" width="587"]Jungle Blues, performed by Dorrance Dance. Image courtesy of Dana Lynn Pleasant.[/caption] The show started with a piece titled Jungle Blues that was originally choreographed in 2012 to music by Branford Marsalis. If I am being honest, this is not one of Dorrance’s strongest works. Featuring an array of duets and solos with larger ensemble groups as atmospheric background, this work acts as an homage to blues music that is meant to take us back to blues bars of the 1920s and 30s. There are some signature movements of Michelle’s that tie nicely with the groove of the music including rolling spines and hips, music that is felt in the rise and fall of the shoulders, and an innate coolness that comes through slides and intimate caressing of the floor. The technique and footwork of the performers is exceptional, but the choreographic assemblage and use of characterization is wanting. The moments of this work that pop are the various individual tricks that the dancers whip out as well as surprises like a flask filled with mystery liquid from which they playfully swig. My partner, Becky Ferrell, always asks one question of any choreographer that she reviews: what is this work doing to push the boundaries of the dance field? Though this piece is a loving tribute to the relationship between tap dance and blues music that proceeded The Blues Project (Dorrance’s 2013 Bessie Award-winning evening work), Jungle Blues seems to be thinking more about a past rather than future relationship. [caption id="attachment_1889" align="aligncenter" width="1080"]Three to One, performed by Dorrance Dance. Image courtesy of Dana Lynn Pleasant.[/caption] Where Jungle Blues was (for me) thinking too much about the past, Three to One engages the kind of interdisciplinary future that Dorrance has become known for since Dorrance Dance’s origins. Featuring Dorrance as a tap soloist (which is worth the price of admission alone) with two barefoot dancers beside her, this work is a fascinating marriage of tap dance with contemporary modern dance. Since seeing video excerpts of this piece online, I have often referred to it as a “Disfigure Study” of tap dance. Disfigure Study is a work by choreographer Meg Stuart where she manipulates the audience’s ability to see by only lighting specific body parts and leaving others in the dark. The effect creates the illusion of abstracted body parts floating in space. With Three to One, the first image is curated by the light to only show the dancers from the knee down, highlighting the parts of the tap dancer that are arguably the most important: the feet, ankles, calves, and knees. The effect here is interesting because it immediately puts the tap dancer and modern dancers on equal playing ground. A clear indication that everyone is working from the same place on the body, yet in many ways the tap dancer is clearly the dominating centripetal force bringing everything into her sonically and physically. From the first movement, which was Dorrance sliding her feet in perfect time with the music (by Aphex Twin and Thom Yorke), there was an invitation to the modern dancers to join through the initiation of a tap dance step that was equally as accessible to the barefoot as it was to the tap shoe. As the piece progresses, more and more of the body is revealed, but the root of the sound and movement continuously moves from the bottom up. The modern dancers eventually exit, leaving Dorrance on stage for a prolonged solo where she deliberately plays with the audience’s inability to see the entire stage. She steps in and out of her rectangle of light, forcing us to listen close as she (dis)(re)appears, reminding us that tap dancers have the ability to be heard even if they are not visible; a superpower in its own right. What we’re left with at the end is the sonic residue of the tap dancer who has demonstrated that they are able to not only keep up with and blend with modern dancers, but also to lead and organize them. When all else has disappeared, the sound of the tap dancer lingers in the blackout. [caption id="attachment_1891" align="aligncenter" width="600"]Myelination, performed by Dorrance Dance. Image courtesy of Em Watson.[/caption] The title of the final work, Myelination, is a term in anatomy that is defined as the process of forming a myelin sheath around a nerve to allow nerve impulses to move more quickly. In a short Q+A with Dorrance Dance during an invited tech rehearsal, Dorrance revealed that many (if not all) of the featured solos and duets were entirely improvised. It’s not uncommon for tap dancers to take longer improvised solos, but there is something to be said about the process of becoming adept at weaving physio-musical phrases at the drop of a hat. That seems to be the myelination that the title is referring to: the myelination of each performer’s neuropathways that allow them to traverse them more quickly with each repetition, and perhaps arrive somewhere new at each ending. It’s also fascinating to consider how the work begins and ends with the full cast, but everything in between is divided up into small groups. The exploration Myelination partakes in is one of deconstruction. The work begins with a throwback to Three to One. The lighting points out the bottom half of three performers’ legs as they angularly approach their movements with exacting precision along with the music. This time we have sneaker-clad legs in the center with two tap dancers on either side: we get immediately introduced to the capacity of tap dance to begin to blend with hip hop, which becomes a staple of the piece throughout. Some of the most exciting moments in the work are unmistakably derived from the floorwork of breaking, but Dorrance and her crew are able to execute a flurry of sounds despite not being in the traditional standing posture that tap dancers typically assume. In fact, it’s arguable that the cross-pollination of genres is what makes Myelination stand out because of how it expands upon the logic of Three to One and uses each dancer’s individual strengths to its advantage. For example, we have multiple dancers who modulate between tap dance, hip hop, and modern dance vernaculars as previously mentioned, but we also have many performers shifting to guitar and drum set. This is an extension of the tap dancer’s logic of being simultaneously dancer and musician, but Dorrance seems interested in deconstructing the boundaries between various genres, not just in the dance, but in the music as well, which incorporates a wide span of genres including funk, scores composed on a cinematic scale, electronic music, and a capella voice work. At the center of it all, tap dance becomes the place where all of these things intersect. This becomes obvious at the end of the work because of how tap dance technique comes to the forefront. Lightning-fast precision is shown by the full cast as they make their way on stage for their finale. They go through an intense deconstruction of tap dance’s moving and audible parts, and, in the end, reassemble all the fractured pieces of the cast with each of their individualized and enlarged tap dancer identities, as if to remind us that their possibilities are ever-expanding based on what they are surrounded by. In this way, Dorrance Dance stands for a new way of thinking about tap dance that is not bound to a purist mindset. They manage to simultaneously pay homage to the rich history of tap dance with works like Jungle Blues and choreographic inclinations towards improvisation, while still questioning and pushing the boundaries of what future iterations of the genre might look like. So, the company’s initial reminder that we “are not at the ballet” is interesting because we are also not at a traditional tap dance show. It will be interesting to follow Michelle Dorrance’s work moving forward because of questions of categorization. What does it mean to redefine a genre like tap dance through cross-pollination with other genres? What does this collaborative approach offer future generations of tap dancers? Time will tell, but chances are that we will need to myelinate our pathway through the ambiguity of the new.