The New Yorker has hailed her as “one of the most imaginative tap choreographers working today,” and at 44, Michelle Dorrance continues to live up to that description. Los Angeles audiences will get to see the award-winning dancer on Sept. 6, when she brings several members of her Dorrance Dance troupe, along with special guests Jillian Meyers and Chloe Arnold’s Syncopated Ladies, to The Ford.
“At some point,” she said, “I thought about what this program could be — and that I was going to want to involve some of my friends in L.A. I also needed a woman who could both sing and be percussive.”
That woman is vocalist/percussive artist Penelope Wendtlandt, who will be performing her music using loop pedals as well as doing body-drumming. As for Dorrance’s L.A. friends, they include internationally acclaimed tapper Josette Wiggan and the Emmy-nominated Arnold, who’s cast Syncopated Ladies Gisele Silva, Ki’Leigh Williams, and Delaney Prescott in the show. Dorrance Dance, which was founded in 2010 and earned a “Bessie” Award for its inaugural performance, will feature dance captain Elizabeth Burke, Luke Hickey, Leonardo Sandoval, and former company member Byron Tittle.
Then there’s Dorrance herself, whose love of collaboration has seen her create work with a range of artists such as Lil Buck, who specializes in a style of street dance known as jookin, actor/clown Bill Irwin, and New York City Ballet principal, Tiler Peck. The tapper has also garnered a slew of awards, including a 2012 Princess Grace Award and a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship, as well as having been named a 2018 Doris Duke Artist.
New York City-based Dorrance was raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by a father who coached a woman’s soccer team and a mother who founded the Ballet School of Chapel Hill. She was drawn to tap because she was good at it — as she explained, “not because I was particularly graceful, but I was musical. That’s the reason it became my dance form.
“I was obsessed with it,” added Dorrance, who also performed for four years with the off-Broadway dance/percussion show STOMP. “There are so many reasons I love the art form. On top of [it] being viscerally my language and who I am, it’s an unbelievably sophisticated hybrid of dance and music.”
The two-act performance will feature bassist and Dorrance music director Gregory Richardson, who’s also a co-founder, with Sandoval, of Music From The Sole, a tap and live music company, and guest bassist Richard Giddens, a former Stomp cast mate. The show’s first act closes with Dorrance’s Basses Loaded, to a score by Richardson and featuring a quartet of tappers, along with upright and electric basses.
Dorrance is also keen on the second-act number, a reworking of her SOUNDspace, from 2013. Originally created as a site-specific piece that explored the unique acoustics of St. Mark’s Church in New York City — one of that city’s oldest churches that still hosts religious services — it has since evolved from its original context into a virtuosic exploration, and explosion, of rhythm through the myriad sounds and textures of the feet, and has proved easily adaptable to other spaces.
It was also an experiment that paid tribute to the tap great Jimmy Slyde and, at the same time, protected the wood floors of the historic building, as the dancers weren’t allowed to use metal taps on most of the wooden floors.
“It’s one of my favorite works,” Dorrance gushed. “We adapted it and have been touring it for 10 years. The sound is so good. I was thinking that I can bring all of this live music — the music of tap dance — because I want people to more deeply invest in it and understand it. We originally started the work in the church for three minutes in the dark. The acoustics of that space — you could hear a sock fall 100 feet away.
“To choreograph,” continued Dorrance, “is to compose. SOUNDspace is important [because of] the tonal depth of the form, the textural sophistication. Elizabeth and Luke are soloists, and they bring in one Syncopated Lady, Gisele Silva. That is where you’ll see everyone who’s been in the show. We’ll also use elements in The Ford, because there are two [levels], and because of that, we’re able to do what we did on the altar of the church.”
Dorrance further explained that she likes the way the work “can feature explorations [and] improvisational solos. Through the lighting concepts, I invite the audience to understand what tone is attached to what part of the foot. A ballet audience knows what turn-out is, but [people] are less understanding of tap dance from a technical standpoint. [Even] from the back of The Ford, there’s an entire section where the leg is lit just above the knees down to guide the audience’s eye.”
Since her troupe’s mission is to help audiences view tap dance in a new and dynamically compelling context while honoring the Black American legacy of the art form, Dorrance keeps the flame alive as she continues to break new ground. She and her troupe will be back in LA on December 12, performing Tchaikovsky's classic "Nutcracker” Suite to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement at The Soraya. “I feel lucky that I grew up when I did, inside of this form,” she acknowledged. “My generation is incredibly blessed and charged with responsibility by our elders. We had this time with them [and now] we’re kind of de facto storytellers and keepers of the form.”