![]() ![]() I want to create a show that I want to watch, and they are integral to achieving that. I don't want to watch myself for an hour. To let them live as individual artists within the work, to ask them to solo, SO important. To bring these disparate personalities together as an ensemble is so exhilarating to me. My dancers are singular personalities, unique physically, unique in their rhythmic sensibilities, and in their tonal expression and inflection. Each dancer must have a unique improvisational voice. I seek dancers that are genuine and generous performers and I seek those that value both composition and improvisation, discipline and spontaneity, meticulous precision and taking risks. I want to work with dancers who have an unconquerable respect for our art form, its traditions, and its possibilities. RD: What does it take to be a tap dancer and what do you look for in your dancers?ĭorrance Dance is made up of truly unique dancers and musicians. And now that I’m a little older, carving out time to take care of my body so that it can still do what I ask of it. It’s not that I don't draw inspiration from concept, narrative, visual or movement based ideas, it’s just that in order for any of those things to be honest, their songs must come first. And by "music," I can mean a particular composition or song, I can mean a rhythm in my head or its counter rhythm, I can mean a feel, I can mean the tension that we can build between two feels, and I can also mean what emotions arise from any/all of that music. Music is at the root of almost everything I create. ![]() RD: What do you prioritise: the music or the visual aspect? The MUSIC of our dancing is one of the most defining features of tap dance. I would love to challenge audiences investigate this. We still get the feedback: “Oh my gosh, its music!” A tap dancer is equally responsible for their music as they are for their dance. ![]() Many have not been exposed to the sophistication and depth of tap dance as music, nor exposed to the form’s tremendous growth over the last 40 years. Some of our audience members are still having these “ah-hah” moments when they’re watching not just Dorrance Dance, but tap dancing right now. RD: What’s the biggest misconception about tap dance?Īnother major misconception is that the sounds of the tap shoe are secondary to the dance. He could imitate every famed Irish dancer of the day, imitate them imitating him (mocking the minstrel tradition of blackface), and then dance an inimitable style all his own, “like no one had ever seen before”. The writings about Master Juba’s dancing describe him as the most technically masterful but also the most creative. His success in America brought even greater success in England, where he was a critical favourite and the most written about performer of the entire 1848 season. There were a great number of touring “minstrel groups” with “jig dancers” or ‘buck dancers” at the time, but Master Juba became the most world renowned. In 1844, African American dancer, William Henry Lane (known as “Master Juba” or “Juba”) defeated the famed Irish American dancer, John Diamond, in a public contest at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City, for the Title of the Champion Dancer of the World. Most people think the dancers of the movie-musical era brought tap dance into the mainstream but that history is much more interesting. RD: Who are the people who brought it into the mainstream? "It is one of the most varied dance forms on the planet and absolutely one of the most cutting edge" The origins have an incredibly powerful effect on the form to this day. Outside of Native American traditions, tap dance is the first “new” dance form to develop in America. In the mid to late 18th century, drums were taken away from African-American plantation slaves because they were used to communicate and to organise escapes and uprisings.īody percussion/hambone (known then as "patting juba") and tap dance were born both out of a necessity to communicate and survive, as well as an outlet for expression. ![]() One of the first accounts of tap dance (called buck dancing and/or buck and wing before it was called tap dancing) in the US dates back to the 1700s on a slave plantation. We chat to tap dancer and choreographer Michelle Dorrance about the peculiarities of tap dancing and her new production, Myelination. ![]()
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