Jazz Tap Ensemble Steps Back Into Town

As dancers from Jazz Tap Ensemble rehearse for its first hometown season in two years (tonight through Sunday and April 21-23 at the Morgan-Wixson Theater in Santa Monica), they convey a subtle sense of musicians improvising after hours in an empty nightclub. While the pianist lays down a blues track, their tapping offers moody counterpoint, the two art forms weaving in an acoustic entity.

That mutuality of dancers and musicians--what founder/artistic director Lynn Dally calls the “jazz combo concept”--has characterized Jazz Tap’s work for the last 10 years. This has been a decade of extensive national and international touring, several changes of personnel, the occasional use of such guest artists as Honi Coles and Gregory Hines, evolution of choreography and financial ups and downs.

But the rhythm tap group is now launched on what promises to be a busy and productive anniversary year, following several months of economic woes.

Dally looks back at those problems and says, “They weren’t unusual in this field and in these times. It’s about money, and you can never escape it. Running any dance company is a constant fight about where to find the next loan or foundation source. Touring costs are horrendous, arts funding has been cut and a lot of sponsors are less able to take a risk and present challenging programs.

“We’re coming off a deficit situation caused by an accumulation of many things. When you’re just hanging on, all you have to do is make two or three not-wise business decisions and suddenly you’re in trouble. For example, we spent $5,000 we really couldn’t afford on a promotional video that didn’t turn out well.”

Another compounding factor, Dally notes, was that bookings were off during this period. “Sometimes we get booked as a novelty and in that sense shifted aside from the mainstream. As a novelty you have to wait several years before someone brings you back. And what’s really ironic is that sometimes we’re called ‘non-traditional,’ when we’re very much in the middle, using two American art forms: jazz and tap.”

Another irony is that Jazz Tap is better known in its tour cities than in Los Angeles, an economic fact of life Dally would like to change by establishing a home base here. Through stringent cost-cutting measures, she and her board of directors have reversed the deficit and are striving toward greater local visibility.

With a new booking agent, choreography commissions and some helpful grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Council, Dally said she feels Jazz Tap is back on track. She has, in fact, expanded the group by adding trumpeter Stacy Rowles and dancer Mark Mendonca, 19, from Berkeley.

Why change the configuration of three dancers and three musicians? “I’ve been doing this work long enough to begin to feel some urgency about passing it on and providing a setting for someone else,” Dally says. “Now that we’ve made a connection with older dancers like Harold Nicholas and Jimmy Slyde, who have guested with us (Eddie Brown will guest in the upcoming season), I want to expand with younger people.

“Aesthetically, I like having more ages in the group because it’s interesting to choreograph that way. Mark is raw and young but he has a combination of skill, information and musical intuition that makes him right for this group. He can relate to what we’re doing.”

Mendonca, who began with Jazz Tap in February, says he is excited about joining the group he has admired since he was 12. A tap dancer for 13 years, with some ballet and jazz training, he has concentrated on a cappella tap improvisation for the past few years and said he brings a different style to the group.

“My movement is less perfect than their jazz, ballet and modern dance,” he says. “My eye sees different shapes in movement than the others do--it’s from my background, all those hours of improvising.

“As for my rhythm, I play fewer notes with my feet and I give them stronger accents. It fits in with what the group does because it works musically. Rhythms don’t go wrong.” After 10 years, Dally said that Jazz Tap has deepened. “We’re better rhythm dancers now,” she says. “What we do is more refined, it has a greater dynamic and a deeper musicality. It’s not that our style is changing, it’s that the possibilities are greater for me as a choreographer. Our evolution depends on the different qualities and styles of the people in front of me.”