Tap Dance and tragedy don’t usually find themselves in the same room, but Chicago Tap Theatre’s new tap drama, “Time Steps” (opening tonight and running through April 10 at Stage 773), locates the two at the tricky intersection of entertainment and serious theatre.
If you had a chance to go back in time and re-live your most defining moment over again as often as you wished, what would you change? What could you change, and what would it cost you? Heady questions for a tap dance show.
Under the choreographic helm of CTT artistic Director Mark Yonally, the company has never shied away from the incongruous, and in fact thrives on it. “Time Steps,” directed by master tapper and jazz original Billy Siegenfeld, raises the stakes higher than ever. The production is no mere clothes line upon which to hang some fancy footwork, but rather, takes the challenge of mining the riches of a dance idiom historically associated with light-hearted entertainment, and of harnessing those riches in the service of serious storytelling in a theatrical context. Yonally’s tap choreography uniquely tackles the theatrical mandates of character development, relationship, dramatic intention, dialog, and plot.
His evolving vision of tap theatre manifests itself in “Time Steps” as a multi-disciplinary story drama played out with one speaking character who doubles as narrator (concept collaborator and writer, Marc Kelly Smith as The Old Time Time Salesman), live original music (composed and performed by resident music director Kurt Schweitz, with Michelle McGovern on flute and Nora Barton on cello), and spectacular special effects lighting and projections by Dustin Derry.
Delving into some dark material with a Faust-influenced construct, “Time Steps’” protagonist laments a heart-wrenching decision that propels him on his journey back in time to fix what time can’t heal. His story unravels as he wrestles with his inner demons in the grips of time travel, medical technology, money, love, loss, and ultimately the meaning of time.
One of the productions most notable achievements, among many, is the use of the characters’ own self-accompaniment in tap to define who they are and what they want at any specific moment in the story. Ribbet’s subtle courtship takes place in the tentative tapping of his gentle rhythms, while Carla’s pull-backs register her initial reticence. While Smith’s Time Salesman does all the verbal talking, dialog is in abundance through the interchange of complex tapping rhythms between characters, including a lyrical love duet and a heated argument between the main protagonists. While Smith’s sometimes deliberately-clichéd, and yet comforting anchor of narration provides necessary story “glue,” the ingenious use of tap dance, with minimal reliance on mime, creates the equivalent of scripted dialog that needs no narration to transmit its meaning.
Visual spectacle is consistently a highlight of CTT productions, and “Time Steps” really ups the ante, literally, with a laser roulette wheel projected onto the floor, engulfing the gamblers in its sphere of anticipation. Projected lines of light isolate Carla in a cone of unreachable time. Moving projections across the upstage wall provide a collage of imagery that immediately conveys the sense of time moving at once forward and back, effectively creating an atmosphere of transience and transcendence. 
In an off-center casting twist, the usually-affable Yonally takes on the role of conflicted protagonist, Argile Ribbet, the materialist heir to his father’s fortune, smitten by the winsome Carla, played by Jennifer Pfaff Yonally. Kirsten Uttich and Isaac Stauffer play Carla’s attractive and sympathetic friends Natalie and Sergio, with an able ensemble of six providing scene support in multiple capacities as doctors, healers, party-goers, gamblers, and market festival performers. Aric Barrow hovers hauntingly as The Dark Figure, in an embodiment of death.
As with Faust, metaphors abound, and leave you with plenty of universal parallels to real time, whatever that is. As the Time Salesman tells us, “Past, present, and future are all one thing. The only thing that changes is the illusion.” Playing nobly with that illusion “Time Steps” aspires to a level of theatre that makes us think, feel, and question.
You’re not likely to encounter a tap dancing grim reaper, or a time travel tap dance drama about cancer and medical treatment any time soon this century on any stage other than the one at 1225 West Belmont. True, these are uncomfortable subjects, but with CTT’s able and talented crew navigating the tricky roadmap they’ve laid down, you’re in store for a journey that is both thought-provoking and entertaining.
For details and tickets, go to seechicagodance.com and click on “Upcoming Events.”