Jazz Tap Ensemble at Ford

Vintage Hollywood musicals made commonplace the spectacle of tap-hordes pounding out unison step-patterns, row upon row. On Saturday, however, the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood seemed too small to hold the thrilling mass assaults of the six virtuoso dancers in the Jazz Tap Ensemble: Lynn Dally, Sam Weber, Derick Grant, Lainie Manning, Dormeshia Sumbry and Mark Mendonca.

Opening the third “Summer Nights” season at the 75-year-old outdoor venue, the ensemble offered a wide range of tap expression, from Weber and Manning’s re-creation of classic Astaire film choreography to Mendonca’s innovative contemporary tap.

With Mendonca, Grant and Manning in especially fine form, the program as a whole confirmed the ensemble’s prowess and creativity. However the newest pieces often proved problematic. An untitled collaborative trio for Mendonca, Sumbry and Grant, for instance, shackled everyone to line-dance formulas except for brief gymnastic fireworks by the men and an intriguing idiosyncratic finish. Jerry Kalaf (leader of the fine four-member band) supplied a score with a sly insinuating theme, but it didn’t release anything in the dancers beyond faceless politesse.

Dally’s moody “Ruby, My Dear” solo for Sumbry seemed to stretch the company’s dynamic 19-year-old prodigy toward a warmer, softer, looser style--but the experiment didn’t yet seem convincing or even fully energized--just dutiful.

However capably executed, the Astaire reconstructions misrepresented the original routines by cutting away everything except the conventional happy tap. Gone the darker, interior sections of the “Top Hat” solo (and, course, the “machine-gun” execution of the corps), with only the interplay of footwork and cane remaining. Gone, too, the whole rich and complex first half of the “Begin the Beguine” duet that Astaire performed with Eleanor Powell in “Broadway Melody of 1940.”

“Bouncin’ the Blues” fared better, but this playful rehearsal duet from “The Barkleys of Broadway” was always very, very minor Fred and Ginger and the question remains: If you’re honoring the past, why trivialize it?