Happy Feet and Heavenly Steps

Without a visit from Gregory Hines late in the program, an evening with the Jazz Tap Ensemble would be . . . well, still a great evening of tap and jazz. But Hines’ now-familiar invitational tap-off (he invites whoever has their tap shoes onstage to jam) seemed a fitting way to cap the ensemble’s 20th anniversary concert at the Ford Amphitheatre Sunday night. Earlier, artistic director Lynn Dally had introduced the more senior tap mentors in the audience--Fayard Nicholas and Arthur Duncan--so Hines’ appearance provided another illustrious link in the chain.

Among the current crop of ensemble members, Channing Cook Holmes is hard to beat. To watch him is to remember the intrepid Nicholas Brothers and get an update on inventiveness and charisma at the same time. His traveling steps seem like animated hieroglyphics, and his seductively knitted brow hovers over an elusive smile as he tosses off hurricanes of footwork. It’s cool tapper meets young Elvis. In Holmes’ own solo “Seven,” his steps seem to squeeze out as a result of knotted concentration and divine impulse; in “Interplay,” made for the company by Jimmy Slyde, Holmes erupts into the biggest, riskiest slide of all.

The company looks great in “Interplay,” and also in Dally’s new piece “Noche II,” in which a sense of noodling and feeling the breeze is interwoven with lyrical shapes, tilts and airy shifts of direction. Solos in the latter piece worked particularly well for Becky Twitchell and Carol Christiansen, while Roxane Butterfly looked strongest in her own solo “Love for Sale.” Skittering through a continuous rain of taps, Butterfly didn’t float so much as bob like a pony, a puppet or Ann Miller.

The troupe’s newest member, Steve Zee, seemed affable and subdued when next to Holmes, but in Zee’s solo “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (to Charles Mingus music), he was compelling in a different key. His steps are neatly designed; his style strongly vertical, with lots of complex multiple rhythms tapped out underneath a balanced torso.

The dancers’ formidable musician partners never went unnoticed, but in two instrumental interludes they were easier to appreciate individually. Perhaps drummer and musical director Jerry Kalaf’s “Tiny’s Last Tune” floated up into the heavens most deliciously, with Theo Saunders on piano, Domenic Genova on bass and Doug Walter playing saxophone. The piece had the kind of sunny melancholy you find in the ‘40s, when Fred Astaire hardly ever wore a frown for long.

All remnants of formal systems broke down into more reckless improvisation when Hines came on during the piece he made for the company, “Groove,” which had been a mild kind of shoop-shooping till then. Guest tappers included Mark Mendonca, whose lean, street-smart virtuosity melded with Hines’ own. All that was missing were very young tappers, who may need more courage before joining the hotshots onstage. They can also get that from the tap ensemble, in the kids’ classes that are part of its current tap festival. Thriving in the present, the Jazz Tap Ensemble is looking toward the future, too.

* Remaining events in the Jazz Tap Ensemble’s Summer Tap Festival ’99 include workshops and open company auditions. On Thursday, the ensemble performs at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City, 8 p.m. $20. (310) 475-4412.