DANCE REVIEW : Classy Rhapsody in Taps Proves Art Form Is Alive and Kicking

Playing to a packed house Saturday at the 1,200-seat Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College, Rhapsody in Taps elicited the kind of fervor usually reserved for jazz greats or a prized athletic team.

The six-woman dance ensemble, complemented by a live jazz combo and 71-year-old tap master Eddie Brown, came honestly by the enthusiastic reception. The music (played by Phil Wright, Steve Fowler, Al (Tootie) Heath and Jardine Wilson) was classy and wonderful, and the dancing more than equal.

Tap dancing may be the quintessential American art form, and Rhapsody in Taps, paced by artistic director Linda Sohl-Donnell, offers evidence that it’s not only thriving but feeling at home in the bodies of women. More than her colleagues, Sohl-Donnell managed to keep all the fluent action in her legs; her upper body remained utterly calm, her shoulders level. This skill allowed audiences to concentrate on articulate feet, to watch the dialogue between dancers and musicians.

The flip side of this prodigious control is a certain leveling of sexuality; in attempting to emulate the style of their male ancestors, the women lose the ditzy appeal of their female ones. But times have changed, and perhaps this genderless virtuosity is an appropriate stance for tap in the ‘90s.

Sohl-Donnell joined percussionist Mark Berres for a remarkable duet, redolent of India, called “Piru Bole.” With Berres playing tabla and Sohl-Donnell tapping, both scatting and the dancer pinging finger cymbals, they captured the irregular rhythms and intonations of John Bergamo’s score.

Eddie Brown’s pipestem legs were accentuated by the white morning suit he sported in “Eddie’s Suite.” Easy in his choreography, he really cooked in the rhythm tap improvisation, tapping out an aural challenge to the jazz ensemble and sustaining a complex exchange with the musicians.

The other dancers (Karol Lee, Pauline Hagino, Monie Adamson, Beverley Scott and apprentice Marci Juris) came into their own most fully as the glamorous, hard-driving chorus line of “Dark Eyes,” the closing number. In black trousers and glittery blouses, they created an energy as inexorable as a speeding train, and no less beautiful.