Rhapsody in Taps Shows Serious Skill

Rhapsody in Taps, co-founded by Linda Sohl-Donnell and Toni Relin, celebrated its 20th anniversary Saturday at the Japan America Theater in downtown L.A. Most of the faces have changed, but the artistic impulse to stretch and test tap’s limits has remained constant.

The important change now is the attention paid to construction. Built with an eye for balance and a push toward making creative choices--which had in the distant past sometimes delivered overly zesty rah-tah-tah-tah tapping capped by plastic smiles--Saturday’s bill offered clean, bold, wonderful seriousness.

Sohl-Donnell can take credit. She’s directed alone for most of the company’s life. Her two new works, “Espiritu” and “Riptide,” revealed shifts in tone, mood, rhythm and dynamics that were apportioned in fascinating measures.

In “Espiritu,” a duet for herself and musician Monti Ellison, on a Brazilian berimbau, her dance image went from one kind of insect to another: dragonfly, bee, hornet. The berimbau’s strange vibration and Ellison’s detailed actions--popping his head toward her, rolling his eyes a little--suggested their interest in each other as insect to insect.

The whole piece also had, though, a kind of mystical mystery. “Riptide” for the group--dancers Christopher Burks, Pauline Hagino, Mindy Millard, Holly Scheall-Mehling and Fred Strickler--inspired urgent water images. Dressed in ultraviolet pants, they looked like phosphorescent fish. Their arms swished across their chests as if overwhelmed by invisible currents. Ellison wrote the heroic score for four drummers.

Live music accompanied the program throughout. Guest artists Arthur Duncan and Althea Waites also performed.