Dorrance dance photo by sally cohn
Dorrance Dance's ETM: Double Down
(as adapted for The Yard)
TapTheYard Week 1
Saturday, July 2
11am and 7pm
Location: The Martha's Vineyard Performing Arts Center (PAC)
Run time: TBA
2015 MacArthur Genius Grant Award winner and 2014 Alpert Award winner, Michelle Dorrance brings her company, Dorrance Dance, back to the Vineyard for the second time since 2015. Using electronic tap “instruments” of Nicholas Young’s invention—the product of a multi-year collaboration between Nicholas Young and Dorrance—the sound of a single footfall can range from a snare drum to a note or an arpeggio.
New York’s Dorrance Dance aims to honor tap dance’s uniquely beautiful history in a new and dynamically compelling context, not by stripping the form of its tradition, but by pushing it: rhythmically, aesthetically, and conceptually. Street, club, and experimental dance forms—all of which are American dreams—awake to the sound of furious rhythms and find their boundaries missing. Tap dance, America’s most long-standing indigenous jazz vernacular, is here to receive its due. Dorrance Dance’s inaugural performance garnered a Bessie Award for “blasting open our notions of tap.” The company has performed at Danspace Project, The Kennedy Center, The Yard, Symphony Space, Jacob’s Pillow’s Ruth St. Denis Stage, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (CHRP), The Barcelona Tap Festival, The DC Tap Festival, The North Carolina Rhythm Tap Festival, The Soul to Sole Festival and Beantown Tap Festival’s “On Tap!,” all to rave reviews.
“Ms. Dorrance plays the crowd as well as her feet: She leaves you wanting more.”
- The New York Times
