Veterans Give Life to Tap Festival

A doctor tapping into a patient’s vein does not always come up with the perfect hit. So it went Saturday at Orange Coast College’s Robert B. Moore Theatre, where the Southern California Tap Festival culminated a week of celebrating tap dancing.

Sponsored by the college and Rhapsody in Taps, a company that remains seriously style-challenged, the 15-part program of old and new works, “Essence of Rhythm,” ran into clogged arteries with the cryogenic smile factor of its director-choreographer-tapper, Linda Sohl-Donnell.

Fortunately, another shoe managed to drop: The night belonged to veteran hoofers Brenda Bufalino, whose blood runs with joie de tap, and Van Porter, a blazing virtuoso who commands the stage like a five-star general.

Porter dazzled with “Mack the Knife,” his effervescent diving turns and split kicks bringing a bit of street to the stage.

Diva Bufalino, wailing with her feet, is plugged into the music, her primal rhythms invoked in “This Is the Beginning” and “Tribute to Charles Mingus.” Whether gliding, sliding or vocally vamping, this 60-year-old makes it a syncopated walk in the park. In “Just Friends,” a premiere with Sohl-Donnell, Bufalino blew the taps off her colleague’s shoes.

Christy Wyant and Fred Strickler, both Rhapsody in Tappers, premiered “Morning” and “On Green Dolphin Street,” respective solos that occasionally raised the pulse rate from flat-line to head-bobbing, finger-snapping life. Bob Carroll’s “Only One” moved from languid to lightning-quick in a heartbeat. And gangly tap elder Glen Turnbull proved, in “Soft Shoe,” that tap keeps you young.

A quintet of live musicians helped keep the evening throbbing.