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CHICAGO HUMAN RHYTHM PROJECT'S "JUBA! MASTERS OF TAP AND PERCUSSIVE DANCE"
Everybody was welcome at the big party Chicago Human Rhythm Project threw last night. The house was filled with percussive dancers, both students and expert practitioners. And then there was me. What I know about tap-dance you could put on the head of a pin.
Still, I felt at home and happy. We laughed, we cried. Stories and jokes were told, astounding feats of tap-dance magic were performed, standing ovations were enthusiastically conferred. The occasion? The 20th anniversary of Rhythm World, brainchild of CHRP cofounder Lane Alexander and the longest-running festival of American tap in the world. "JUBA!" is its three-day faculty concert, which continues at the Museum of Contemporary Art Thursday and Saturday with two completely different lineups from Wednesday's. The Vijay Tellis-Nayak Trio, blessedly quick on the uptake, provides live music.
"Faculty concert" doesn't quite cover what "JUBA!" is, though. Old hands and newcomers alike are welcome onstage. Thursday's performance features several youth tap ensembles, while on Saturday the MCA itself receives a 2010 JUBA! Award.
On opening night, JUBA! Awards were handed out to tap veterans and master teachers Dianne "Lady Di" Walker and Sam Weber. Video footage of each --- talking, teaching, dancing --- got the same riotous applause as the live acts. And for good reason. Both are clearly gentle souls whose passion for the art of tap drives their no-holds-barred teaching, which honors music and the individual as much as steps.
Weber was still recovering from a double hip replacement and did not dance. Walker did, and it was the most mature and personally expressive performance of the evening. Quiet sounds, slow steps, soft claps, pauses, stillness --- Lady Di had everyone in the palm of her hand. Shaking a finger at us, making a little joke about taking a shortcut on some steps, she took her own sweet time and let us see who she is.
Other old-timers included Jay Fagan and Alexander himself, head of CHRP's resident ensemble, BAM! That sextet (including Alexander) performed his "Prisms," which shatters the ensemble into individuals and duos, male and female. Still, our sense of the whole is primary, created by Alexander's strong and comprehensive choreography (Alexander, Michaels/Future Movement, the precursor of BAM!, blended modern and tap). Fagan proved incredibly entertaining, both standup comic and tap-dance chameleon, demonstrating such fusion forms as tap yoga and, at the audience’s suggestion, "tap-bo" (tap + Tae Bo).
Winners of CHRP’s first-ever Virtual Rhythms contest also got into the act. According to Alexander, the evening's emcee, 20,000 votes from 87 countries were cast online in response to posted videos. Matt Shields, from Austin, Texas, won in the choreography category for his quartet "The Night Before Tomorrow," and Chicago's Be the Groove won the videography award for its snappy, rappy video "Breath."
That leaves the middle generation, whose representatives on opening night were astounding, all in different ways. Ayodele Casel is a lightweight --- in terms of size, not talent. Small and slender and a little reserved (think Audrey Hepburn), she floats over the floor delivering taps so clean, light, and quick they're like a hummingbird's thrumming. By contrast Derick Grant, also featured on the first half of the bill, is a big lug. Taking a far more muscular approach, he could stand up to the trio's more muscular jazz. Freely expressive, he grunted, paused, attacked again. Responsive to the live music, he softened his taps when it quieted.
Jason Janas opened the second act. Oh, the energy of the young. Not yet 30, Janas delivered a barrage of taps at the get-go --- an arpeggio to match the piano's --- and just kept getting louder, harder, faster, and more inventive. He's not a pretty dancer, and I mean that in the best possible way. Instinctive, fierce, with the mannerisms of a hip-hop artist, he cut a strange figure in his dress shirt, tie, and white patent leather shoes, perhaps worn in honor of the occasion. And took the musicians on one hell of a ride.
Closing the program, Jason Samuels Smith covered a broad territory, from the moody and weird to the argumentative definite to the mellow and sparse. Overall his relationship to the live music was the most complex of the evening, a kind of friendly antagonism that challenged the trio to shift gears. In the process he challenged himself.
The "Shim Sham" finale brought all the dancers up onstage, tapping in unison. Seeing and applauding everyone once again was like delivering a round of hugs at the end of a family party. Icing on the cake.
