Music / Dance Reviews : Jazz Tap Ensemble at Barnsdall Park

The newest member of the Jazz Tap Ensemble, Derick Grant careens across the stage of the Barnsdall Park Gallery Theater as if he’s about to fall--but, of course, he never does.

Resplendent in his dreadlock bangs, earrings and loose T-shirt, he’s playing the footloose tap-dance kid to Sam Weber’s effortless old pro, sliding and dodging unpredictably while Weber detonates immaculate volleys of high-velocity step combinations.

Their fire-and-ice “Duo” remains one of the highlights of Jazz Tap’s three-performance Hollywood engagement, running through tonight in perhaps the most intimate local space the company has played since leaving Lynn Dally’s old studio above a barbecue restaurant in Venice.

That was more than a decade ago, but Dally still seems to make up her solos as she goes along, with “Round Midnight” proving especially memorable on Saturday for both its brooding sense of weight and its gestural sensitivity. She also brought a wry suavity to her interplay with Grant and Weber in the mercurial “Caravan.”

Oddly remote and even somewhat stiff in group pieces, Denise Pennington looked stylish in her “Blackbird” solo, especially when she dropped the balleticisms for a no-nonsense buildup of speed and force toward the end. But, characteristically, Weber’s solos stayed in a class of their own because of the way he appeared to grow playfully obsessed with an idea or motif and then take it all the way to its most dazzling extreme.

Crammed into a corner of the stage, musicians Tom Garvin, John Heard, Jerry Kalaf and Stacy Rowles exuded consummate expertise through a varied and demanding program.