Before Dorrance Dance began on Friday, October 21, I was in the ladies room of the Power Center. There was this little girl in her polka-dot dress and tights washing her hands, as I stood in the inevitable line for the stalls. She was dressed up for the theater and held her mother’s hand as they left for their seats. Suddenly, I had a longing to be that little girl, when going to the theater still had a shine of novelty to it, and everything was wondrous because it was new.
Michelle Dorrance and her collaborators created a show where I got to be a child again; as her collaborator Nicholas Van Young wrote about “ETM: Double Down”, they created a playground “Where you can let your imagination and your feet run wild”. A show in two parts, their movements were mesmerizing. We as an audience sat stunned in our seats, afraid to clap for fear of missing some vital part of the music their feet were creating. It was tap like I’ve never seen it.
The first act was excerpts from Dorrance’s “SOUNDscape”, where the only sound was the precise tapping of their toes. One moment their legs are moving too fast to see and the next there is an exaggerated slowness to their movements where you see, rather than hear, the ensemble breathing together. While this act featured no background music, “ETM: Double Down” was a mixture of music, beats, and notes played by the tappers themselves and their collaborators. Never was there a more perfect marriage between tap and technology.
For two wonderful hours I sat enthralled; everything was novel and everything was new because I was constantly surprised about what might happen next. I was a child again- transported up there on that playground with them.
