On Dance
JACOBS, LAURA A.
On Dance TAPPING ON BROADWAY BY LAURA A. JACOBS It is ethnic dance that tends to fare best on Broadway, the Moiseyevs and the Georgians. And then, in a class by itself, there is the work of...
...Its flashes of underworld violence, of staged lovers' quarrels and untimely deaths, reminded us that the tango originated in the bordellos and ghettos of Buenos Aires...
...So Black and Blue takes another leap...
...It is true that overall the evening's flow is idiosyncratic...
...Ralph, hangdog and innocent, Lon, long-suffering and resigned...
...And in contrast to flamenco's extravagant notions about personal heroics, the heroics of hoofing have to do with setting aside outsized emotions, siphoning them off...
...What better metaphor for the blues...
...a sort of spiritual knockknock joke...
...Briggs makes like a dreamer, but he's got more than one voice in there clammering for attention...
...He also may be subversive...
...he is caught up in a highly articulate reverie that leads him all over the map...
...Henry LeTang gets a high-speed, chorus-line momentum from the dancers...
...Louis Toodle-oo" comes late in the show, at a point where the audience is ready for the understatement, the wit so dry it makes a vacuum, the sheer minimalism...
...Slyde seems to take his style from his name...
...Carrie Smith has an earthy resonant voice that swings low and surprisingly sweet...
...The men, hyperarticulate down through the thigh and heel, and archly languid up through the back and arms, were chattering rationalists, unable to talk reason with these florid, pouncing beauties, yet reasoning anyway...
...In his New York Times review, the consistently thoughtful Frank Rich seemed not to feel the hook-and-eyes (the sense of delicate closure) stitched deep within the production...
...They sing, the men dance, and it makes sense...
...In the subtlety of their rhythmic and emotional rapport Ralph and Lon are a match for Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon, Steinbeck's George and Lenny, or the two runaways, Maréchal and Rosenthal, in La Grande Illusion...
...So "flash," the recall startles us and there is an undertow of recognition and regret...
...This was a revue that, figuratively, had been around the block, and it took Broadway by storm...
...This is not state-of-the-art Broadway fare, even though each number is meticulously, often sumptuously staged...
...It became common property, however, once Fred Astaire began doing it in the movies...
...He may have worn a top hat in the RKO films with Ginger Rogers, but his heart yearned like Porgy's (and his feet were Sportin' Life...
...Like the waltz, it was an underclass dance that trickled up...
...Gregory Hines, who with his brother Maurice played a Nicholas Brotherslike team in Francis Coppola's movie The Cotton Club, has made this equation in his dancing—overtly in the movie White Nights, less obviously in the recent Tap...
...In "Black and Tan Fantasy," early on, he wafts through the dance in a red velvet sportcoat and riding breeches, a fey little stableboy sending up the moneyed white folk...
...Astaire took on their character, too: the modesty and the "plenty o'nothin'" life view...
...Now Segovia and Orezzoli are back again with what may be their most ambitious and moving tribute to indigenous dance...
...It is the women who fuel Black and Blue emotionally...
...In "Everybody Loves My Baby," the number that introduces the dancers, choreographer Henry LeTang trots out all thegenres(the men in tails, thewomen shimmying like Josephine Baker), yet not until two anonymous choristers emerge from the line, flying over and around each other, does everything click...
...Having invented the stair dance, Robinson tried to copyright the concept when other hoofers began stealing it...
...Cholly Atkins appears to have been most in command of the big production number and its cinematic dimensions...
...Black and Blue, in other words, keeps turning in on itself, playing peek-a-boo with history and tradition...
...they have a slouchy, dance-hall quality...
...His work on "After You've Gone" is pleasingly stark and atmospheric, with strong roots in the '30s, and ominous as well...
...Rather, the numbers are positioned in ways that enrich those coming next...
...He is flanked by two girl tappers, Cyd Glover and Dormeshia Sumbay, and when these three lightly competitive yet generously protective young dancers are together in their first number, "Rhythm is our Business," you get a sense of what the show is all about and why it is wonderful...
...Frankie Manning's numbers are structured like narratives...
...Perhaps...
...He, more than anyone, popularized the humble art of tap—he trickled it up...
...Briggs, on the other hand, is a more complicated performer...
...It's as if his feet, charging happily off without him, carry his body along in a whoosh...
...Then there is Ruth Brown, a grande dame whose every entrance comes with a scowl on her face...
...Tap is dance receding to the state of music...
...They are Everypartnership, communicating on a low-flying threadbare carpet of halfthoughts, hesitations and sighs...
...Black and Blue (the show takes its name from the mournful blues classic that caps the evening) opened in late January at the Minskoff Theater...
...These two Argentine set designers first gained attention, and raves, for Tango A rgentino, a pressure cooker of a production that brought us the tango in all its sexy, razor-sharp wit...
...And it wasn't simply that he borrowed the sprung rhythms of the great black hoofers...
...Would Ralph and Lon bring down the house in a lesser context...
...Technically, tap has never sat well on women...
...The flipside of a flash act is the gentle, self-effacing softshoe of the sort we get from Ralph Brown and Lon Chaney...
...His specialty is a strolling step with a sharp tap echo...
...Flamenco Puro gave us flamenco on a big, bare stage—alien and genuine...
...Dressed in raggedy suits (patchwork and checkerboards, underclass references as well as an evocation of Harlequin, are the lietmotif of the mostly glitzy costuming), the two dancers are simply there...
...Did a current of anger inhabit this dazzling technique...
...For instance, when Savion Glover does a stair dance the ghost of Bill " Bojangles" Robinson hovers near...
...With his florid white hair, elfin expression and bellclear style, he's always described as mercurial, silvery...
...The oldtimersshowusnotanartof archaicism but of modernity...
...This is the evening's most poignant number because of the way it distills the mood of the whole show—the refusal to be sentimental...
...Their rendition of "East St...
...It is an evening of rebounding images and musical reverberations...
...Dancers step out of mystery boxes...
...Brown sings this against a gorgeous star-scattered black backdrop, and as the song works up to a temper and she lets out her final note, the stage flashes lightning blue and the whole backdrop flutters down—it's the train of her skirt...
...The dancers were not kids straight out of theacademy...
...As his feet chatter softly Briggs looks wistfully about him, acknowledging applause with a smile, then jerking his attention downward when those same feet take off in a surprise riff...
...Heading imperiously into the wings, Brown seems to be hauling off the universe...
...Segovia and Orezzoli followed Tango with Flamenco Puro, which was even better...
...Indeed, Astaire is very much present at the Minskoff...
...It is not meant to express galvanizing passions—that's blues territory...
...Slyde is not audience-oriented like Briggs...
...They're a flash act à la the Nicholas Brothers, those powder-keg virtuosos who performed at posh places like The Cotton Club but couldn't drink there...
...Segovia and Orezzoli gather up the past and bounce it into the future...
...Still, there coundn't have been an Astaire as we know him without a Robinson...
...Four choreographers contributed to the show...
...It requires too low a movement from hip to knee, opens the legs too informally, and in general compartmentalizes the body in a way that is antithetical to our notions of feminine beauty...
...When Ginger Rogers tapped with Astaire she was usually wearing jodphurs, or roller skates, or sailor suits —sporty, girlish get-ups...
...And then, in a class by itself, there is the work of Claudio Segovia and Hector Orezzoli...
...Fifteen-year-old Savion Glover, the star of Tap Dance Kid, has grown taller and silkier, and possesses a wisechild stage graciousness that only a teenage trouper could have...
...Singers rise up out of the floor messianically...
...Their big voices lamenting, lambasting, carry theshow on a great matriarchal wave of knowing...
...There is a "younger generation" here, too...
...This superbly fleet and nimble tapper, fluid of body yet leaning low in the hips, has a delicious slide technique...
...The hoofers perform their own numbers, of course, and Jimmy Slyde and Bunny Briggs both have unforgettable solos...
...Tap is an external art, like a shell game or a poker bluff...
...One might say it is a matter of being economical, of hitting something rock-bottom and as certain as the floor...
...they all look as though they could step confidently into the spotlight...
...For where Tango was intriguingly erotic and glamorous, Flamenco Puro was art—and an art form we rarely get to see in such strength...
...The stage, all swags and curtains, traps and shadows, grottos and self-revealing compartments, seems to open echo upon echo...
...The women, imposing, modern-day Heras, raised huge dust clouds with their skirts and ruled the roost...
...He is the ventriloquist and they are Charlie McCarthy, biting out backtalk, conspiratorial...
...Some may see Black and Blue as a mere stroll down memory lane...
...She stops the show with her tart and tarty rendition of "If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sittin' on It (...ain't no reason to give it away)," which is about a chair, but not really...
...Linda Hopkins is the beauty, making herself innocent and edging her high notes in gospel warmth...
...I doubt it...
...In terms of pure élan I would single out Fayard Nicholas' work for three men in "I Want a Big Butter and Egg Man"—all dainty wrists, piquant hops and steely rhythmic backbone, this is clearly choreography of the first order...
...The chorus may be the most attractive I have ever seen...
...The temperature is hot and then cold, as if Segovia and Orezzoli tried to capture the languor, the malaise of the blues...
...they were full-bodied troupers, men and women who knew what was what...
...It boasts three great women singers—Ruth Brown, Linda Hopkins and Carrie Smith —and four grand old men of tap: Ralph Brown and Lon Chaney, Bunny Briggs, and Jimmy Slyde...
...Later, in his extended solo to "In a Sentimental Mood, " we get a tougher concentration...
...The three women of Black and Blue are an imposing triptych...
...These men and women are not only accomplished...
...Nonetheless, this is dancing beyond the pale, dancing of a depth and experience we don't see much anymore...
Vol. 72 • March 1989 • No. 5
