The Rhapsody Continues as Troupe Keeps Tapping

There are harder things to do in the Southland than create and keep a dance company going, but doing that has to rank right up there on the Don Quixote list of impossible dreams.

So how has Linda Sohl-Donnell managed it? Her Los Angeles-based Rhapsody in Taps troupe will celebrate its 20th anniversary season Saturday with a program at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

Sohl-Donnell and Toni Relin were graduate dance students at UCLA who began working together and decided to form a company.

“We were young, we were inexperienced,” Sohl-Donnell said recently from her studio in Long Beach. “We called the company ‘LTD/Unlimited Dance Company’ because we truly were not looking to have any limits.

Their early work reflected Relin’s interest in theater pieces and Sohl-Donnell’s in rhythm tap. But after Relin retired in 1984, the company became all tap. Sohl-Donnell changed the name to Rhapsody in Taps in 1986.

“In the early phase, my personal obstacle was how to find my own voice,” she said.

Sohl-Donnell had studied and later would perform with legendary tappers such as Foster Johnson, Charles “Honi” Coles, Buster Brown and Eddie Brown, among others.

Early reviews typically compared her and her dancers--unfavorably-- to those dancers.

“But we were coming along several generations later with a totally different experience of dance,” she said. “Why would I try to dance like Sandman Sims? That’s his identity. The whole history and heritage of tap is to try to find our own voice. Or as earlier dancers would say, ‘Find your own gimmick.’

“So to be compared to those men, people didn’t get it. To this day they don’t hear the musical thing [we do] at all.

“Musical aspects are not discussed, only visual information. ... Reviewers are used to picking up on movement; no mention of, say, the African polyrhythms.”

The problem was that Sohl-Donnell was experimenting with adding elements of modern dance--new choreographic moves and structures, shifts of weight and color to create phrases and melody. She was also branching out to include world music.

But audiences liked what she was doing.

“We’ve sold out at Orange Coast College at least six years in a row,” she said.

Still, “box office never pays for a self-produced concert,” she said. Other difficulties include keeping dancers when they get offers from others, coordinating musicians’ schedules (since 1985, the troupe has danced to live music) as well as juggling dancers’ schedules.

The company has managed to keep going by eliminating overhead (it has no office) and running with a skeleton staff of Sohl-Donnell, administrative director Kay Davis and a dedicated board.

It has received funding and support from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Panasonic Corp., the Irvine Foundation, the Japan America Theater and Orange Coast College.

“We are an independent company from Orange Coast College, but without their support, it is possible we would not still be here,” said Sohl-Donnell.

The Irvine Foundation gave Sohl-Donnell a $30,000 choreographer’s grant in 1999. A year later, she received a $15,000 phase two grant to continue her work.

The company consists of a core of seven dancers and five jazz musicians. But for the anniversary program, several guests--including Arthur Duncan and Althea Waites--will be coming as well.

“Getting ready for this concert has really been a labor of love,” said Sohl-Donnell. “I’ve reviewed all these videotapes to decide what pieces I wanted to reproduce and reconstruct. It’s strange. I don’t normally speak like this. But I’m very proud. I’m very pleased with the body of work--not only my choreography, but work that the company has created.”

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* Rhapsody in Taps will dance its 20th anniversary performance Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Robert B. Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. $23, in advance; $29, at the door. (714) 432-5880.