Still Light on His Feet

In his mid-80s, with arthritis and a hip replacement slowing him down, every dance step is hard won for Fayard Nicholas of the legendary flash-tap team the Nicholas Brothers. But in the star spot of a wide-ranging program by the Jazz Tap Ensemble at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Saturday, this impish, irrepressible tap icon danced to “Chattanooga Choo Choo” with enough stylish hand passes and emphatic foot accents to set the audience howling and even Nicholas himself to proclaim, “I didn’t know I could do that.”

His performance of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” featured even more fancy stepping--though, of course, nothing like the spectacular flying and sliding splits that he and his younger brother Harold ventured in the “Jumpin’ Jive” number from the film “Stormy Weather” back in 1943.

“I don’t do it like I used to,” Nicholas said. “To tell the truth, nobody does it like I used to.”

True enough. Harold had died earlier the same week, leaving Fayard very much a singular sensation and loading this Jazz Tap tribute to the brothers with far more poignancy than anyone could have foreseen. Founder-director Lynn Dally seemed continually on the verge of tears, and Nicholas’ medley of songs that had been introduced by dancers reminded everyone of how few of those dancers are still among us.

Even that amazing “Stormy Weather” dance clip--projected at the very end of the evening because, after all, what could possibly follow it?--had its downside, commemorating a style of tap very much gone with the wind. Indeed, when Jazz Tap members Steve Zee and Sam Weber danced their reconstruction of Fayard Nicholas’ choreography of “Kalamazoo,” the emblematic up-flung hands and nervy buoyancy of the duet formed a potent contrast to the low-to-the-floor, studiedly mellow but intricacy-obsessed tapping that dominated the program as a whole.

Within that approach to tap, the current company dancers (Dally, Zee, Weber and Roxane Butterfly) and their less familiar associate John Kloss each mined an individual groove engagingly while the augmented band (Jerry Kalaf, Louis Durra, Domenic Genova, Doug Walter, Stacy Rowles and Scott Breadman) exemplified refined versatility.

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Weber’s smooth ballet turns spiced his new “Bailin’ ” solo and Butterfly’s tap improvisation incorporated everything from high-pressure attacks to a little fanciful moonwalking. But company pride of place on Saturday arguably belonged to Zee for daringly spare, rhythmically acute tapping in much of his “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” solo. His dancing may have grown conventionally ornamental midway through--and the ending proved too tense for the laid-back accompaniment--but his best sections had a deep jazz impetus and sophisticated musicality.

Guest Idella Reed added distinction to the event with forthright, authoritative solos, and former company member Derick K. Grant returned for superbly playful flights of virtuosity. Trainees from the ensemble’s Caravan Project joined the Nicholas Brothers tribute by dancing two Fayard N. pieces reconstructed by Zee and Becky Twitchell, as well as performing a Twitchell trio earlier in the program.

Oddest inclusion: Dally’s “Common Ground,” in which tappers interacted with flamenco and classical Indian specialists, trading steps and swirling through loose, arbitrary and ultimately inconclusive linkups. Back in April, Jazz Tap appeared in a problematic full-evening melange of this sort in Cerritos, and you could understand why Dally would want to get beyond its personality conflicts and grandiose dead-ends to simply explore the juxtaposition of percussive dance forms.

Call it unfinished business, with no sense of direction but plenty of individual skill. Liliana de Leon and Anjali Tata represented Spain and India, respectively, in this multicultural research project--nothing as pretentious as “Soul to Sole” (the title of the Cerritos event), but more like an everyday L.A. “Feet Meet.”