Keeping a Consistent Beat

When you get right down to it, the beat is the very basis of life, pounded out with every heartbeat that pulse-pulse-pulses through our veins. So it’s no wonder we’re so profoundly compelled by other rhythms, from the throbbing sounds of our environment to the beat of a catchy tune.

This universal message underlies the somewhat more specific impulse of “Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk,” which is to tune in to the distinctive rhythms of black America, using the mediums of tap dance and music to view African American history.

Vividly conceived by playwright, director and Public Theater producer George C. Wolfe and choreographed by tap-dance sensation Savion Glover, “Noise/Funk” thrilled audiences at the Public in late 1995 and early ‘96, then on Broadway for 2 3/4 years. Now it’s on tour, stopping at the Orange County Performing Arts Center through Sunday.

As performed by its current cast, “Noise/Funk” is more of an ensemble show than when Glover performed in the original New York production.

With Glover, every move is a revelation, issuing from a thousand different impulses. The result is so explosive that even the most talented dancers have trouble holding their own next to him. Consequently, his presence made the show herky-jerky--star turn followed by ensemble number followed by another star turn.

The current dancers have absorbed Glover’s pyrotechnical style, but because they’re all performing at about the same level, the show flows smoothly from beginning to end. Though the energy has dulled a bit in the translation (and, inevitably, it further dissipates in an auditorium as big as Segerstrom Hall), “Noise/Funk” remains irresistible.

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To those of us used to tap dance in the watered-down form of grinning chorus lines in Broadway and movie musicals, “Noise/Funk” is a jolt. There is sleekness here, yes, but there is also earthiness, angularity and a dazzling range of emotion, from fury to rapture. A hip-hop sensibility pulses through it all, adding new dimension to the styles that have been passed along from generation to generation.

These styles are playfully and lovingly revisited, as “da beat” pulses through history, the dances accompanied by spoken text and evocations of each period’s music.

Searing images abound: a captured man on a slave ship tunes in to the pride and freedom within, thus escaping his shackles; a jubilant dance is interrupted, prematurely and violently, by a lynching in 1916; families move to a hoped-for brighter future in the North, only to find themselves newly shackled to menial jobs.

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When we reach the present day, we find that, for all that things have changed, the more they’ve remained the same. Men from all stations of African American life--from a hip-hop-attired youth to a Colin Powell-like celebrity--try to hail a New York City cab, only to have the fearful, prejudiced drivers screech off without them. Left in the dust, each man pounds out his anger with his feet. Therein lies salvation, for the beat keeps them going.

The audience’s yelps of pleasure are well-earned by dancers Sean C Fielder (alternating with Jimmy Tate), Dominique Kelley, Vincent Bingham and Christopher A. Scott; bluesy singer Debra Byrd; rapper-narrator Thomas Silcott; and drummers Dennis J. Dove and David Peter Chapman (replaced at Tuesday’s opening by Martin Luther King).

BE THERE

“Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Today and Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. $21-$52.50. (714) 740-7878, (213) 365-3500. Running time: 2 hours.