But it’s still a delight to see her do it all, switching seamlessly among roles, as she did in her company’s brief but stellar season at New York City Center.
In some ways, even while multitasking, Dorrance was taking a step back, making space for voices other than her own. Two programs, on Thursday and Friday, featured a new work by celebrated clown and comedian Bill Irwin, along with “Jump Monk,” from 1997, by veteran tapper Brenda Bufalino. Next to Dorrance’s dances, which on Friday included the premiere of her typically inventive “Basses Loaded,” these opened up a dialogue between generations.
Dorrance and Irwin poked fun at their age divide — she’s 39, he’s 68 — in the New York premiere of their collaborative “Lessons in Tradition” (2016), a charming trio with 28-year-old singer and bassist Kate Davis. Introducing himself and Davis as “vaudevillians of disparate age and vintage,” Irwin grudgingly invited Dorrance to the stage — grudging because then he had to keep up with her. (Naomi Funaki, as an eager assistant, fulfilled his request for an oxygen tank.)
“It’s loud and frankly sometimes vulgar,” he griped of Dorrance’s rapid-fire tapping, defending his less strenuous form of footwork, the soft shoe. But the two arrived at common ground, as Dorrance left and returned dressed just like him, in top hat and suspenders — “traditionally!” he exclaimed.
After an interlude — a sweet rendition of “Lazy River,” sung and strummed on ukuleles by Dorrance and Davis — Irwin unveiled his “Harlequin and Pantalone,” a comedic tour de force for dancer Warren Craft. Joined by Gregory Richardson on bass and Donovan Dorrance (Michelle Dorrance’s brother) on piano, Irwin narrated the tale of the title characters: the jester who loved to dance, and the master who tried to stop him. In alternating costumes, disappearing behind a tall curtain and reappearing seconds later, Warren ingeniously played both.
The work is touching not only for Warren’s transformation and improvisation as he shifts between lanky entertainer and hobbled villain, but also for Irwin’s conscientious role, as he rises from the narrator’s seat to shoo Pantalone offstage and coax the dejected Harlequin back into dancing shape. Observing evil, he enters the fray; if only it were so easy, in life, to steer conflict in the right direction.
Offsetting this character-driven work, Bufalino’s exuberant “Jump Monk,” to music by Charles Mingus performed live, played more purely with form. Known for founding the American Tap Dance Orchestra in 1986, Bufalino organizes dancers (in this case, 10 fine members of Dorrance Dance) like sections of a band, in complementary rhythmic factions. Visually and aurally, the results are riveting.
These complex, satisfying arrangements could be seen as precursors to Michelle Dorrance’s work, to the way she integrates music and dance and sends bodies zipping through space, like stones across water. Selections from her repertory — the capacious “SOUNDspace,” the shadowy “Three to One” and the coy “Jungle Blues,” all of which featured too many exceptional performances to name here — offered chances to trace those connections, as did her newer work.
“Basses Loaded,” for four tappers and four basses (two electric, two standing), had choreography for all, with the instrumentalists circling or closing in on the dancers. At the core of the action was Elizabeth Burke, who tore up the stage in a deft and impassioned solo. Michelle Dorrance watched from behind her electric bass, looking as natural on the periphery as she does in the limelight.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.