American Moves: Swing and Tap abound on Houston dance stages

Tapestry Dance Company

American dance forms dominate the concert stage this February. Theater Under The Stars (TUTS) plans a rousing version of the Broadway hit Swing, while the Jewish Community Center (JCC) celebrates Dance Month with Austin’s outstanding tap company, Tapestry.

Swing, the dansical, is a non-stop dance marathon tracing the history Lindy Hop from its beginnings at the Savoy Ballroom (and other places) in the late 1920s to today. With Mark Stuart Ekstein, a two-time Lindy Hop champion at the helm, you can expect an authentic experience through and through. Ekstein was a 19-year old music composition student at Syracuse University when he first spotted some champion swing dancers at a local bar. “I was blown away,” he remembers. “And I knew I wanted to do it.” He was hooked and had to give it a try. And try he did, joining every group he could find and eventually making his way to New York to study with the pros. Within a year’s time he won his first lindy hop championship in 1999.

When Swing hit Broadway in 1999, he was excited that his passion was finally getting its due on the Broadway stage. “I was disappointed that they didn’t use real swing dancers at first,” Ekstein admits. “But now that I’ve been with the show for a number of years, I see the need for trained dancers; Swing dancers don’t have the muscular strength to get through the show.” He’s been involved in three national tours and several regional productions, first as a dancer and now as co-choreographer with Beverly Durand and assistant director. He’s done a good big of choreographic tweaking to give the show its authentic feel. “There’s something about performing partnering dances that brings the cast together,” says Ekstein. “It makes you come together as a family.” The TUTS production, directed by Marc Robin, has been considerably spruced up by all involved.

Ekstein trains his dancers continually to get a more historical style by showing actual footage of Savoy dancers and other educational opportunities. He also urges them to go out dancing as often as possible and see the real thing. “There’s something about swing dance always touches people,” he says. “The original swing dancers lived through the great depression and World War II.” For Ekstein the spirit of rebirth shines through to audiences. Harold Wheeler’s on-stage 8 piece band—that sounds like 12—also sets the mood.

The partnering demands are big, with numerous lifts and other acrobatic feats. “We need tall men and tiny women,” Ekstein says. “And we have to be very careful about injuries. It’s not an easy show.” Since catching the dance bug at college, Ekstein has been involved with numerous musical productions, including Cats, Miss Siagon, and the feature film, Idlewild. Reactions from audiences are like nothing he has ever seen. “People are jumping out of their seats and dancing back to their cars in the parking lot,” he says. “It’s two hours of pure joy.” Local swing dancers take heart; the Houston Swing Society will be doing a pre-show demonstration on February 2nd which will include audience participation.

Maxine Silberstein, the dance director at the JCC, has always taken an inclusive approach to dance for the winter celebration known as Dance Month. “We go for a broad approach for dance month,” says Silberstein, whose line-up includes modern, folk, ballroom, and the fiery tap dance troupe. “When I heard Tapestry was putting together a historical look at tap I knew it was a match.” Silberstein has had a long association with the company and its director, Acia Gray, so she was thrilled that the timing was right for Dance Month. Gray has been shaping her moving tap museum she calls The Souls of Our Fee: A Celebration of American Tap Dance for over a year now. With a touring grant from the National Endowment for the Arts she’s ready to take the show on the road. The idea is to restage the best rhythm tap masterpieces, from Fred Astaire to The Nicholas Brothers, and create a moving tapestry from the masters to those tapping today. Live jazz music by the Eddy Hobizal Jazz Trio will accompany 18 tapping feet.

The first part will be actual recreations of famous movie routines like the Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly duet from Singing in the Rain. “I’m not asking the dancers to be these great dancers,” says Gray. “The idea is to put the dancers in the style and be able to see it in three dimensions.” The second half will be devoted to demonstrating the work of American masters. Gray has studied with the best, including Charles “Honi” Coles, Jimmy Slide, Buster Brown and others. She in turn has handed the work down to her dancers, as the work travels from generation to generation. Her troupe of versatile dancers also trains in ballet and modern dance. Recently, company member Jason Janas was featured in the January issue of Dance Magazine.

When you ask Gray about the origins of tap, she responds, “It depends on who you talk to. Percussive footwork has been around forever.” Street meetings between Irish and African Americans in the five point region of New York were key in looking at the roots of tap. Irish Step and African Juba both influenced the development of tap. Gray, a former percussionist, sees tap as an inherently musical form. “We are truly listening to our feet as musical instruments,” she says.

Whether it’s been a decade or a day since you donned your tap shoes or burned up the dance floor, February bursts with American dance energy for your enjoyment and education.

Theatre Under the Stars presents Swing from January 30-February 11th, Call 713-558-8887 or visit http://www.tuts.org/.

The Jewish Community Center presents Tapestry Dance Company in The Souls of Our Feet: A Celebration of American Tap Dance on February 3rd and a family show on Feb 4th at 10am. Call 713-551-7225 or visit www.jcchouston.org.

Reprinted from Artshouston.

Grave Talk: Nova Arts Project’s Brave New Hamlet

Sean Judge and Leraldo Anzaldua in Hamlet
Photo by Noe Mendoza III.

We have all seen Hamlet the old way, perhaps countless times, so why not inject a little adventure in the process? That’s what the folks at Nova Arts Project were thinking, when they set out to redo the Bard’s classic play about a sane boy gone mad in a nutty world, or the other way around, depending on your point of view. Is Hamlet mad or is he just mirroring the world-in-collapse around him? Director Brian Byrnes keeps us guessing in his killer thriller rendition of Hamlet.

The disintegrating world forms the starting point for Byrnes’ Hamlet. The audience is greeted with an armed riot squad trolling about the stage; there’s no shying away from a violent world here. Something rotten this way comes for sure in Denmark or wherever Byrnes has placed his totalitarian society. Set in what looks like a bunker, with a handy on-stage incinerator for the mounting bodies to come, the scene looks all uncomfortably familiar. Enough about the living, it’s the dead that count here. The ghost of Hamlet’s father, stoically played by Shelley Wilson in full Darth Vader garb, gets the first and last words.

Aaron White’s ticking-bomb Hamlet adds a visceral quality--a palpable jumpiness that creates a physical sense of distrust and amps up the anxiety big-time. White’s adrenalin-charged performance forms the nerve center for the whole drama to unravel. He even manages a microscopic moment of comic relief when he drags Polonius’ body off with a droll “Goodnight Mother.” It's a fresh take on the dreamy prince for certain, and quite thrilling to watch. Jenni Rebecca Stephenson and Sean Judge play Gertrude and Claudius with a chilly polish contrasting White’s hypervigilance.

Clinton Hopper’s austere set combined with Bryan Nortin’s stark lighting set a mood of grim-enough gloom. Kiza Moore’s costumes add a sleek futuristic feel. Byrnes and Leraldo Anzaldua's terrifically exciting fight scenes keep the audience on edge. In fact, the zippy pace punches along at a quick clip heightening the terror at every moment.

I have a few quibbles that have nothing to do with tampering with Shakespeare. The men with guns, traveling actors dressed as prisoners, and rock concert ending proved heavy-handed and largely extraneous to establish the bleakness of the situation. Although Ophelia on a gurney makes perfect sense, I question Hamlet’s use of medieval-looking syringes.

Nova seems intent on following a long-standing tradition in experimental circles of having their way with the classics. All power to this frisky, upstart troupe for carrying the torch for change in the sometimes sleepy world of theater.


Nova Arts Project presents Hamlet through January 20th at the Jose Quintero Lap theatre, University of Houston. Call 713-623-4033 or visit www.novaartsproject.com.

Donald Byrd: Spectrum Dance Theater in Bhangra Fever

Spectrum Dance Theatre in Bhangra Fever
Photo by Chris Bennion

Donald Byrd may share a name with a famous jazz musician, but he’s also a legend of his own in the dance world. Byrd considers himself an American choreographer. He names African American dance icons, Alvin Ailey, Tally Beatty, and Donald McKayle as significant influences, and also considers Balanchine part of his legacy. “Ailey gave me my first break when he hired me to choreograph Shards for the company,” remembers Byrd. “He paid for it out of his own pocket, too.”

His career has taken him all over the dance universe including Europe, New York, and now Seattle, where he heads up Spectrum Dance Theater, Seattle’s leading contemporary dance company. Houston audiences may recall his work with his own company DONALD BYRD/THE GROUP back in 2001. He closed his company for a variety of reasons. “Some good, some not so good,” says Byrd, about those difficult years. “Now, it seems like the right thing to do.”

He took over the helm of Spectrum in 2002. Byrd admits, “I work better inside a company environment.” Although he knew the city and the community, starting from scratch with Spectrum wasn’t easy. “Those first years were tough,” says Byrd. “The dancers were not used to my aesthetic. It took me ten years to get my own company where I wanted it.” Today, he has an incredibly versatile group of dancers, who are mostly natives of the Pacific Northwest. He finds they have they also posses a kind of distinctiveness that he has grown to love. “I am trying to collect that and create this identity,” says Byrd. “They are getting better and better; I am thrilled by that.”

The program speaks to Byrd’s taste for diversity and openness to multi-cultural influences. Bhangra Fever was inspired from article in The New York Times about a famous Bhangra singer being mobbed on the streets of New York. While Bhangra began as a traditional harvest celebration in the Punjab, it was appropriated by the club scene in Asia and the UK beginning in the 1970s.

At the time, the Bhangra culture was hardly on Byrd’s radar. He googled the star, and caught a case of his own Bhangra fever. Intrigued by this dance/music phenomenon that merges traditional Indian music with electronic club music, Byrd set out to do some cultural merging of his own. His movement vocabulary is as much all over the map as the music is. Bhangra music knows no geographic boundaries and is listened to by people all over the world. Byrd’s dance is exotic and sexy, with touches of Indian movements interspersed with ballet and modern virtuosity. “I did some research, but I wanted to mix classical, Bhangra and African dance forms,” he says. “There’s also a highly erotized feeling in this music.”

He’s interested in a philosophy of contemporary modernism, which he describes as “the convergence of populations and information that are crossing boundaries at an unprecedented rate.” Bhangra may have originated in India but we can all claim ownership. It’s that “everyone has access to everything” concept that fueled Byrd’s approach. If music can be democratized, why not dance?

Short Dances/Little Stories is yet another adventure in culture crossing. Houston graffiti artists will be making fresh art in the background while the dance is going on. This piece is an excerpt from a larger evening called “Hip-hop Fado and the Blues.” Fado music, a form of Portuguese blues, grew out of the mixing of African cultures with European elements. “Fado is about the world and life and fate,” says Byrd. “It’s about how we deal with life regardless of what is thrown at you.” Again Byrd draws from a large pool for his movement vocabulary. There’s some Hip-hop influences combined with a strong emotional tone. “Rage and anger are part of hip-hop and I wanted to express that,” he says. “Dance and music is a safe way of really intense emotions. Why not dance it out instead of shooting people?” Artists Nathaniel Donnett, Phillip Perez, A.K.A. "Article," Rudolph Perez, Jr., and Thomas Razo will join the dancers on stage.

The program also includes Thaddeus Davis’ Tantric Voices, set to traditional Tibetan music. “He started to choreograph while in my company and has been at it ever since,” says Bryd about his protégé. “He has a very unique and distinct voice; people say they can see my influence, but I don’t.” Davis comes with an impressive list of kudos, including being named by Dance Magazine as “one of 25 to watch in the world,” the 2003 Choo San Goh Award for Choreography, and the judges’ vote for Ballet Austin’s New American Talent competition. His very first choreographic work, Once Before Twice After, was named one of the top 10 moments in dance for 2002 by The New York Times. Currently he’s a guest faculty member at The Alabama School of Fine Arts and Co-Director of Wideman-Davis/Artist in Residence.

We can’t really discuss Byrd’s career without mentioning his ground-breaking work on the Tony- nominated musical The Color Purple. “It was a remarkable experience, and one very intense year,” says Byrd. “It got me interested in storytelling, narrative, and emotion.” He found working on Alice Walker’s award-winning book life changing. “The musical strikes a balance between visual beauty and the harshness in the book,” he says. “What’s remarkable is that it’s so uplifting by the end. I spent a year crying and didn’t realize I could be so compassionate.”

Versatility, working with a confluence of influences, and staying open to the shifts of the global culture exchange are some of the ideas that characterize Byrd’s style. When you ask Byrd what he’s all about, he refers back to his mentors. “I synthesize a lot of traditions. I deconstruct my influences, break them up, and rearrange them, almost like a mosaic.”

Society for the Performing Arts presents Bhangra Fever, Spectrum Dance Theater on January 12 & 13, 8pm at Wortham Center, Cullen Theatre. Call 713-227-4SPA or visit http://www.spahouston.org/ .

Off the Wall: Graffiti-Art or Not?
A public Discussion with Spectrum Dance Theater Artistic Director Donald Byrd, Executive Director of the Community Artists´ Collective Michelle Barnes, Councilmember Sue Lovell; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, and a local graffiti artist.

Thursday, January 11th, 6:30pm
MFAH, Brown Auditorium
Free
www.mfah.org

Reprinted from artshouston.