DANCE REVIEW : Rhapsody in Taps Troupers Put Best Feet Forward

At its Saturday night concert before a capacity audience at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the Rhapsody in Taps dance company demonstrated that the musical term in its name is more than mere rhetoric.

Sharing the stage with a splendid quintet of jazz musicians, the six-member, Los Angeles-based company at its best wove the percussive qualities of tap into the fabric of the music in ways that made the tapping an intricate extension of the instrumentation.

This integration was most successfully accomplished by veteran L.A. dancer Fred Strickler, who last summer permanently joined the Rhapsody in Taps ensemble as a featured soloist. In the piece “The Single Petal of a Rose,” an Orange County premiere that formed part of a trio of solo works that Strickler choreographed and performed to Duke Ellington music, Strickler elegantly and with a seeming nonchalance was able to modulate his taps to a rhythmic whisper that perfectly punctuated Ellington’s lyricism.

Other local premieres on the generous program (12 tap numbers and two instrumental solos), included “L’Impressioniste” and “Swingin’ With Cedar,” both choreographed by Rhapsody in Taps’ Artistic Director Linda Sohl-Donnell.

Using music by Maurice Ravel, “L’Impressioniste” is a solo work performed by Sohl-Donnell. Both dance and dancer are technically impressive. Sohl-Donnell, dressed simply in loose white pants and bare-backed white blouse, again illustrates the musicality that permeates her company as she delicately maneuvers her tapping in and around Ravel’s rhythms. The missing element, however, is an emotional fluidity or color that Strickler manages to convey with the arch of his eyebrows or the angle of his head and upper torso, but which for the most part eludes Sohl-Donnell.

In “Swingin’ With Cedar,” to a jazz score by pianist Cedar Walton, the primary dancers are Sohl-Donnell accompanied by longtime Rhapsody in Taps dancers Karol Lee, Pauline Hagino and Christy Wyant. Forming the majority of the company, this quartet demonstrates both Rhapsody in Taps’ strengths and limitations.

Technically they are all strong. They can tap like crazy. They are made up of physically disparate types, but then why not? Tap has always celebrated diversity. As individuals, the dancers show flashes of wit in the competitive “Drum Thunder,” and moments of abandon in the final showpiece “Banderillas.”

But there are times too when company members, sans Strickler, dance with forced smiles and a stiffness, particularly in their upper torsos and arms, that gives them an earnest but suburban, not-quite-ready-for-prime-time flavor.