The Center Will Not Hold:
A Dorrance Dance Production

Dance
Created by Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance
Dorrance Dance
Global Arts Live
Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre
April 25-26, 2025

Choreography: Ephrat Asherie, Manon Bal, Tomoe “Beasty” Carr, Michelle Dorrance, Fritzlyn Hector, Donnetta “Lil Bit” Jackson, Richie Maguire, Mike Manson, Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, Matthew “Megawatt” West, with solo improvisation by the dancers. Note: At this performance (4/25/2025), Virgil Gadson replaced Richie Maguire.

Composed by: Donovan Dorrance with live percussion by John Angeles

Lighting Design: Kathy Kaufmann; Sound Design: Christopher Marc; Costumes: Amy Page; Dance Captain: Manon Bal

One cannot say enough about this overwhelmingly persuasive and gripping performance that, in the space of seventy-five minutes or so, runs at full tilt and delivers completely. This run represents a Massachusetts debut of the work and is a wonderful first opportunity to have a look at something truly inventive and compelling.

The choreography is continually fascinating, combining a lot of odd and punctuated movements interwoven so intricately that the overall effect is mesmerizing. Much of the time, many of the dancers are in sneakers, but there are also a couple of dancers who do excellent and hypnotizingly good tap. Integrating the two forms makes for a dazzling effect. Though brilliant tap alone can certainly also be mesmerizing, as in Ayodele Casel’s wonderful show The Diary of a Tap Dancer at American Repertory Theater earlier this season. But, here, with the invention of integrated dance, tap, and phenomenal percussion support, the result has a unique and compelling quality.

All of the dancers are phenomenal – they have interestingly varied body types, and all are incredibly adept. And they seem exuberant, like they’re having a great time.

The music by Donovan Dorrance, the sound design by Christopher Marc, and the lighting by Kathy Kaufmann are also fascinatingly varied and offer striking alterations without interfering with the dancing.

One would not do justice to the performance without giving special mention to John Angeles, the unbelievably capable percussionist. At the outset, he brings new meaning to the idea of desk tapping, and it goes on from there, with him doing his amazing thing with a portable drum set that he carries around onstage. At one point, he gets two of the dancers to do some desk tapping with him and that is also great. The guy is really buff – he looks like a weight-lifting champion, and one wonders whether this is brought on by continual desk-tapping or what. In any case, the guy’s playing is out of this world.

The fascinating thing about this performance, other than the sheer variation of the choreography, the dancing, the percussion, and the supporting stagecraft, is the suggested narrative, which is not at all obvious, though compelling nonetheless. All of the dancers are robed in black – kudos to costume “facilitator” Amy Page – and, as mentioned, many wear sneakers, so one almost feels as thought this is a depiction of urban life, with all of its rhythmic and contrapuntal interactions. I suppose if one were to walk down a sidewalk in Greenwich Village in New York City, there would be enough black-robed pedestrians to give a similar sense of what’s implicitly conveyed here – the dance and the sheer vitality of social life, the variations of all of the ways that people interact and the remarkable chemistry that occurs when they move in harmony, unison or mirror one another. Though not explicit, this wonderful performance gives a sense of those possibilities of social life and how coordination, communication, improvisation and creativity all mix in the scene of our interactions and provide that constant opportunity for exuberance. This production certainly has a heavy dose of that exuberance, and what a joy it is to experience it.

Some particular notes on the performance:
Is that the sound of drums or is it feet? It’s dark!
Ah, at rise, we see it’s a guy drumming on a table. He’s bringing new meaning to the practice of desk tapping, an art practiced by many high school friends.

Two women in striking harmony with the tonalities provide matching movements, according to the patterns of the music. How cool! They slither and glide, but carefully and precisely. How beautiful! Not tap dancing, as expected, but incredible gestural elliptical dance.

Now six of them all are doing it in pairs, with some elements of ballroom dance, all so carefully coordinated. Exquisite!

Flashes of light accompany the tonal strikes.
Now just the original pair of women.
But a man enters from the side, then another, then a pair. Everyone in black. How elegant, how cool! Like an abstraction of people walking on the street.

Then a line of them like a real cool Chorus Line takeoff.
A couple of people come out of the line and riff. Then they lean together, back and forth, like a great wall. A guy slithers and gyrates in front.
Now another guy, and then lots of rolling and gyrating.

A woman, like an accentuated martial artist twists and bends.

Now a chorus of them – six onstage, all doing different things. A little hip-hoppy stuff, but everyone is doing something different.

They all come together, bouncing, marching, sashaying, then following off to the side, bouncing, shaking, as the music gets more energetic.

It’s really taking off now, with the music have a more insistent feeling.

A pair of women mid-stage while the percussionist comes in with his portable drum set, one of the coolest things I’ve seen, and he’s off to the races. The women spin their arms like cheerleader batons.

Tap dancing begins, with a faceoff between drummers and dancers, conveying the verve and intensity of flamenco, rich with passion and momentum. Drummer and dancers exchange riffs. The dancers slide their taps away, like two pedestrians riffing off one another.

A guy inches out on his rear end, another slithers sideways. The guy on the ground pushes himself up into a handstand (!!!) from the ground, then twists and bends with break dance moves in high gear.

A guy with T’ai-Chi-like gestures glides and swirls, then meets with another – is it combat, or what? But it turns out to me more like the inner dance of combat, like drawing on the heart of The Iliad, rather than explicit fighting. Two other dancers join like egg beaters in the soup surrounding.

Ferocious red lights in the background – how great. Now the dancers bounce from every direction, open to moves by the tap dancers but complementing them.

A truly wild tap takes over. She’s like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz on drugs. The background turns green. (Maybe it is The Wizard of Oz!)

The drummer and two dancers do the chamber music table percussion thing, just incredible.

Two dancers gesticulating and knotting, fluid and supple, Pilobolus-like.

Charged music: the whole company in a line, as though on a subway, moving together.
Now in pairs, moving arms and legs in alternation, a bit robotic but insistently human as well.

Two women gyrating, coming together then moving away. One is angular, one fluid, one jerky, one bouncy, then bouncing together, insistently. There is an indecipherable voice above – is it a bus station? Echoing of shoulders, then heads.

That beautiful van Gogh blue background again! Now a cool piano riff and they all bounce and glide. Hints of green in the lighting, making it all like a wild underwater reef, with so many movements and a world of different creatures.

A man whirls and glides. Red comes in from the angular side above. The piano repeating, particularly insistently. Two women dance together, then men glide together. And then amid the sneakered feet, two tap dancers. A high riff on strings and a strike of the drum, kind of wild. Then a woman washes herself in the stream.

A grating rumble, not pretty, out of which a beat hesitantly emerges – like the inception of life with the clicks of errant, experimental mutation. A woman gyrates like the form of life taking the lead. Now a dominant string arpeggio. They wander through gesticulations, then a pair in coordination as though they are searching for company. When will they land? Now a woman walking on her hands and legs backhand = back arched upside down – and a solo tap dance.

One taps, one spins in back. The long percussive raga – a prayer, an observance.

Now all together they are like a chorus line again, with wacky individualism but highly coordinated routines – beautifully syncopated – and it ends with a bang.

What a show!

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)