The cast of Michelle Dorrance’s “Shift.” Photo by Taylor Craft.
Michelle Dorrance is indefatigable. The tap dancer, choreographer, and impresario is one of a handful of young tap artists who have contributed to a renaissance of the art in New York and elsewhere, as well as a shift in consciousness around tap itself. Of course the shift began long before her, with the work of Brenda Bufalino and Savion Glover and others, but tap has emerged as a unique dance language that can be used in an infinity of ways, from the crowd-pleasing to the avant-garde and everything in between. Dorrance has been in the middle of that shift for over a decade.
Her ensemble, like Ayodele Casel’s and others, is a microcosm of the current tap scene: diverse, accepting, seemingly supportive. Each of the dancers in her evolving group has his or her own ideas, style, and career, and no-one dances at the service of anyone else. Her shows come across as a compendium of voices, curated and directed of course by Dorrance, but also individualized. She is the director, but not the star, though she, like everyone, has moments in which to express her own antic, highly elaborate, and joyful tapping chops.
Dorrance, by Taylor Craft.
Her newest show, “Shift.,” now at the Joyce, takes this democratic feeling to a new level. One might say that it becomes the theme of the show. Its structure is less pronounced; one section flows into the next almost organically, with ideas coalescing and falling away, then returning, or morphing subtly into each other. The seams have been blurred, as has the idea of a “front.” The central image is that of the circle, the connecting theme that of passing along ideas and phrases from one person to the next. Two of the dancers sing, one plays the piano, and Dorrance plays the ukulele. Then they switch places. If this feels at times like a closed circle, or a support group, it’s not incidental. The program note mentions the crises of 2024 and the need for “radical care” as an inspiration
Sterling Harris and the cast of “Shift.” By Taylor Craft.
The show begins almost without officially beginning, with the dancers walking out casually, stretching, trying out a few sounds, and then slowly entering into conversation with each other: echoes, call and response, passing around a rhythm. Soon, they form the show’s first circle, in which they kick around tap phrases and tap jokes, eventually creating a kind of theme and variations. Each picks up the theme and plays with it, adding a little flourish, a turn, a quick patter with the toe. Some of the dancers have their backs to the audience—they dance for each other.
The second section is the most charming, with Dorrance playing the ukulele, Claudia Rahardjanoto playing bass, and Addi Loving singing “Dedicated to You,” in a sweet, unaffected voice. The others, opposite them, dance as if for them. Then they turn toward us. The entire scene is like a balm.
This is followed by something starker, as Luke Hickey and Leonardo Sandoval take turns dancing in the dark, followed by the glow of a single lamp, carried by the other dancer. There is a feeling of solitude, of loss, but also of quiet thought. After another circle, Rahardjanoto dances a solo to electronic music, later joined by Dorrance, whose voice, singing “I Don’t’ Want to Set the World on Fire,” is barely audible. The juxtaposition is haunting. Throughout “Shift.,” the joy of community—a powerful impulse for Dorrance—is in constant tension with solitude and incipient anxiety.
Luke Hickey, by Taylor Craft.
Which one wins? The ending, in which Rahardjanoto, Loving, and Dorrance sing “That’s the Way it Is,” without tap accompaniment, and then walk off quietly, suggests that the anxiety of the moment prevails. But in what comes before, the joy of movement and rhythmic variation predominates. Dancers slide across the stage with abandon, or create swirling clockwise arcs, while skittering on their taps; they walk-tap; they face off, dancing in twos, or launch into ecstatic individual solos. Everything flows into everything else. Dorrance dances a solo in which, as usual, her body seems to rearticulate itself into an agglomeration of knees and elbows; Hickey slides and jumps with finesse; the tall Asha Griffith taps with a relaxed coolness that slows things down; Leonardo Sandoval adds lyricism and grace into the mix.
At about an hour, the show is both satisfying and spare, almost insistently un-spectacular. I respect the spirit and craft behind it, and appreciate seeing a more relaxed, less structured side of Dorrance. It’s the work of a mature artist, retreating somewhat into herself. What she and her dancers need now, at this fraught moment, is this: tap as model of behavior. For the audience, it’s that, too, though, in some ways, you have to be in the mood. This is not the kind of show that will take you to another place. But perhaps it offers a subtle shift in perception, a way of looking at the world.
Addi Loving and Claudia Rahardjanoto, by Taylor Craft.
Tap dancer, choreographer Michelle Dorrance and "Shift." Marina Harss's review is a stunning piece of observation that sends me to the dream world. Ms. Dorrance, using the enduring and universal shape of the circle, she connects me to Morse Code. Ms. Harss' writing illuminates the complexity of the tapping patterns where I hear the secret passing of messages at times to one another, other times to the world at large. I appreciate Ms. Harss sending me into orbit.
Thank you for this excellent portrait of the great Michelle Dorrance!