Rhapsody in Taps Is Low on Gusto

Rhapsody in Taps, a locally based company celebrating its 15th anniversary season, may be the Betty Crocker of the tap world: The group is deadly wholesome, gooily homogenized, and seemed to require very little cooking to elicit cheers from the sold-out audience at Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College on Saturday night.

Missing are the grace of Astaire, the grit of “Tap Dogs” and the glorious inventiveness of tap guru Savion Glover, replaced instead with lethargic energy, costumes suitable for a bowling league and fixed smiles as if lithium-induced. Under artistic director Linda Sohl-Donnell’s sterile guidance, “Rhapsody in Taps” is more an elegy.

The retrospective trotted out a slew of technically proficient numbers, where fast tapping occasionally yielded desired percussive effects and hip-swiveling side bends projected a fluid line. This was evident in “Tribute to Eddie”--choreographed by tap legend Eddie Brown--in which Sohl-Donnell executed some respectable traveling steps to music handily played by company members Cecilia Coleman, Steve Fowler, Jardine Wilson and Fritz Wise.

Guest artist Bob Carroll premiered his “Stepping Stones” with heel-kicking gusto, while “Cheatin’ the Snake,” guest choreographer-composer Keith Terry’s hand- and body-clapping work featuring elongated floor slides and calypso-like costumes, brought to mind an unsexy conga line.

Suspender-clad Steve Zee, riffing on a tiny staircase, resembled an ad for Office Depot in his “Improvisation,” while Fred Strickler, in spite of easy gait and manner, never escaped from the patina of sameness in “All Blues” or “50/50,” a duet with Christy Wyant in which chemistry was appallingly lacking.

Dance is propulsion, timing, emotion. “Rhapsody in Taps,” replete with detached monotony, is by-the-numbers shipboard entertainment.