‘Soul to Sole’ Attempts Global Connections

Somewhere near the three-hour mark in “Soul to Sole” on Saturday, Steve Zee of the Jazz Tap Ensemble met Amrapali Ambegaokar of Anjani’s Kathak Dance of India onstage at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts for an unlikely but glorious dance partnership.

Jaunty and streetwise, Zee introduced an intricate rhythmic pattern with his ratcheting taps, and the classically poised Ambegaokar answered him with the slap of her bare feet, the shimmer of ankle bells, and a swirl of gestural filigree that seemed to create a halo around his shoulders.

Starting out as a conventional union of opposites--you say eether and I say eyether--the duet quickly developed from the act of trading steps to a striving for genuine connection, with Zee becoming more elegant and Ambegaokar more impulsive as they made the same statements in different languages, dancing side by side with his arm around her waist.

Whenever they broke eye contact, their dancing declined to the mere juxtaposition of idioms that existed earlier in the program. But when dancing for and at one another, a spectacular fusion of impetus took place that rewarded the beleaguered audience at this endless “Celebration of World Dance” with a joyous living monument to multiculturalism.

Earlier, that audience had endured one unscheduled, prolonged intermission after another while different dance floors were installed and removed to accommodate the participating tap, kathak and flamenco companies. There had been sound glitches and dropped jewelry galore, plus flamenco diva Laila Del Monte marooned onstage in near darkness for minutes on end while waiting for--what? Someone’s hand on the right switch? The latest costume change by her partner? Take your pick. “Soul to Sole” had at least one delay for every explanation.

There had also been innumerable attempts to create the combustible excitement of the Steve and Amrapali act--attempts that fizzled because one of the dancers hogged the spotlight too insistently or another proved so deferential or laid-back that no sparks flew, no fusion occurred and the uninspired melange of percussive kathak, tap and flamenco dancing seemed scarcely worth the effort.

Indeed, given the individual excellence of the vocal and instrumental accompanists for Anjani’s Kathak Dance, the Jazz Tap Ensemble and the Adam and Laila Del Monte Teatro Flamenco, the essays in intercultural musicianship proved one of the evening’s cruelest disappointments--way, way below the various collaborations fielded each year by UCLA’s Asian Pacific Performance Exchange, for example.

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But if some of the hands-(and feet)-across-the-sea segments had only their good intentions to recommend them, the participating companies looked just fine on their usual monocultural turfs. Crowned by the mother-daughter interplay of Anjani and Amrapali Ambegaokar, the opening kathak sequence found six dancers in sherbet colors snapping off 21 turns in perfect sync with one another and their accompaniment during “Bajata Mrudubnga.”

Aided by the singing of Jesus Montoya, the flamenco mood piece “Vivir en el Fuego” capitalized on Laila Del Monte’s struck-by-lightning transformations of mood and impetus, with five other women also contributing their artistry and the unusual addition of a pan flute (courtesy of Damian Draghici) seasoning the dance.

In Jimmy Slyde’s extended showpiece suite “Interplay,” the four-dancer Jazz Tap Ensemble summarized the range of tap expression, from Lynn Dally’s intimate solo to the exuberant challenge dance for Zee and Sam Weber. Interesting how Zee could look comfortable with any partner (including Laila Del Monte later on), while Weber and Dally retreated to a kind of wary politesse when not among close friends.

As for Jazz Tapper Roxana Butterfly, her finest moment all evening came in a galvanic call-and-response duet with kathak percussionist Ramesh Kumar. If only the dreary three-culture “Journey” pastiche had been this freely exploratory, this willing to take risks without the cushion of high-sounding sentiments.

Long before “Soul to Sole” invaded Cerritos, the Denishawn company and school established Southern California as a center for the juxtaposition and fusion of world dance idioms. So there’s no reason to sound self-important when following that lead. Especially when there are so many others renewing that vision today--and so much work left to do.