Dorrance Dance: Myelination BE PRESENT
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2019/20 UMS LEARNING GUIDE Dorrance Dance: Myelination BE PRESENT BE PRESENT 1 2019/20 Table of Contents 04 05 06 19 ATTEND THE DETAILS LEARN CONNECT 07 Why? 20 Being an Audience Member 09 Artist 23 Arts Online 11 Art Form 24 Recommended Reading 16 Performance 25 Writing About Live Performance 32 About UMS 33 Credits and Sponsors October 17-18 October UMS SCHOOL DAY PERFORMANCE Dorrance Dance: Myelination Friday, February 21, 2020 // 11 am Power Center BE PRESENT 3 Attend Coming to your email Inbox! Map and Driving Directions Logistical Details (drop-off/pick-up locations) Venue Information 734.764.2538 ——— UMS.ORG BE PRESENT 4 The Details ACCESSIBILITY We aim to maximize accessibility at our performances and below are details regarding this performance’s points of accessibility. If you have further questions, email [email protected] or call 734.615.0122. The following services are available to audience members: • Wheelchair, companion, or other special seating • Courtesy wheelchairs • Hearing Impaired Support Systems PARKING There is handicapped parking very close to the Power Center on Fletcher Street and in the parking structure behind the Power Center on Palmer Drive. The first three levels of the Palmer Drive structure have five parking spots on each level next to each elevator. There are a total of 15 parking spaces in the garage. VENUE ADDRESS Power Center, 121 Fletcher St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBILITY The Power Center is wheelchair accessible and has 12 seats for audience EMERGENCY CONTACT NUMBER members with special needs. 734.764.2538 BATHROOMS ADA ARRIVAL TIME Compliant toilets are available in the green room (east corner) of the Power Between 10:30-10:50 am Center for both men and women. TICKETS ENTRY We do not use paper tickets for School Day Performances. We hold school The front doors are not powered; however, there will be an usher at that door reservations at the door and seat groups upon arrival. opening it for all patrons. FOOD CELL PHONES Food (including school lunches), drinks, and chewing gum are not allowed in We ask that all audience members turn off their cell phones during the the theater. performance. BE PRESENT 5 Learn Dorrance Dance UMS.ORG ——— 734.615.0122 BE PRESENT 6 LEARN Why? UMS EDUCATION ARTISTIC STATEMENT Dorrance Dance is an award-winning tap dance company based out of New York City. The company’s work aims to honor tap dance’s uniquely beautiful history in a new, dynamic, and compelling context; not by stripping the form of its tradition, but by pushing it forward rhythmically, technically, and conceptually. The company’s inaugural performance garnered a Bessie Award for “blasting open our notions of tap,” and the company continues its passionate commitment to expanding the audience of America’s original art form. Michelle Dorrance, the company’s founder and choreographer, advocates for tap’s acceptance in the academy and on the concert stage while recognizing its history and origins in the devastating conditions of slavery. “I think tap dance is an incredibly transcendent form,” says Dorrance. “It is born of some of the most oppressed people our country and culture has known and…finds its way to joy.” Dorrance’s approach to choreography involves complex movements and frequent collaboration with musicians, other choreographers, and audio engineers. Upon awarding Dorrance a 2015 “Genius Grant,” the MacArthur Foundation wrote, “Dorrance maintains the essential layering of rhythms in tap but choreographs ensemble works that engage the entire body: dancers swoop, bend, leap, and twist with a dramatic expression that is at once musical and visual.” UMS is thrilled to present the stunning intersection of movement, sound, rhythm, and music with Dorrance Dance. BE PRESENT 7 LEARN Why? ONLINE: CONNECTING TO THE PERFORMANCE Online: Getting to Know Michelle Dorrance VIDEO: PBS NewsHour Profile BE PRESENT 8 LEARN Artist DORRANCE DANCE: FIVE THINGS TO KNOW 01 02 03 Michelle Dorrance, whose mother is a Dorrance Dance’s work aims to honor Dorrance premiered the original 16-minute version professional ballet dancer and teacher, tap dance’s uniquely beautiful history in of Myelination at New York City Center’s 2015 began studying ballet at the age of three in a new, dynamic, and compelling context, Fall for Dance Festival. Two years later, Dorrance Chapel Hill, NC. Dorrance quickly gravitated not by stripping the form of its tradition, developed a new, evening-length version of the towards tap and began performing with but by pushing it forward rhythmically, work featuring 12 company dancers, 8 musicians, her local tap ensemble at an early age. technically, and conceptually. The and original music by composers/musicians She later toured with the off-Broadway company’s inaugural performance Donovan Dorrance and Gregory Richardson. production of “Stomp the Yard” before garnered a Bessie Award for “blasting turning her focus to choreography. open our notions of tap” and the company continues its passionate commitment to expanding the audience of tap dance, America’s original art form. 04 05 Dorrance’s work Myelination comes from a biology term referring to the process of a myelin Michelle Dorrance promotes tap both in the sheath forming around a nerve, allowing nerve impulses to move more quickly. This concept academic world and in mainstream culture. manifests in the choreography, as Dorrance creates a dynamic road map of increasingly quick- Following her 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Award, footed movement that is just as musical as it is visually enticing. Beginning with fleeting Dorrance brought tap to mainstream audiences duets, the choreography morphs into energetic and powerful segments with the entire by performing her choreography on The Late ensemble of dancers delivering fast unison footwork. The choreography and music accelerate Show with Stephen Colbert. Dorrance even taught in tandem as the dancer’s musical footwork blends with an original musical accompaniment. Colbert a simple tap sequence to great success! BE PRESENT 9 LEARN Artist ONLINE: GETTING TO KNOW MICHELLE DORRANCE Additional Resources: VIDEO: Dorrance Dance Show and Tell [1 hour 40 min lecture/demonstration] VIDEO: “How tap dancing was made in America” by Vox Media BE PRESENT 10 LEARN Art Form TAP DANCE ORIGINS OF TAP DANCE and Broadway brought performance opportunities to Tap dance originated in the United States in the African-American dancers, racism was still pervasive: early 19th century at the crossroads of African and white and black dancers typically performed Irish American dance forms. When slave owners took separately and for segregated audiences. Tap’s away traditional African percussion instruments, popularity declined in the second half of the century, slaves turned to percussive dancing to express but was reinvigorated in the 1980s through Broadway nd themselves and retain their cultural identities. These shows like 42 Street and The Tap Dance Kid. styles of dance connected with clog dancing from the British Isles, creating a unique form of movement Tap in Hollywood and rhythm. Early tap shoes had wooden soles, From the 1930s to the 1950s, tap dance sequences sometimes with pennies attached to the heel and became a staple of movies and television. Tap stars toe. Tap gained popularity after the Civil War as a part included Shirley Temple, who made her film tap of traveling minstrel shows, where white and black dance debut at age 6, and Gene Kelly, who introduced performers wore blackface and belittled black people a balletic style of tap. Fred Astaire, famous for by portraying them as lazy, dumb, and comical. combining tap with ballroom dance, insisted that his dance scenes be captured with a single take and wide EVOLUTION OF TAP DANCE camera angle. This style of cinematography became the norm for tap dancing in movies and television for 20th Century Tap decades. Tap was an important feature of popular Vaudeville variety shows of the early 20th century and a major Tap Today part of the rich creative output of the Harlem Tap continues to be an important part of American Renaissance. Tap dancers began collaborating with vernacular dance. Modern tap dancers are informed jazz musicians, incorporating improvisation and by the traditions, movements, and styles of their complex syncopated rhythms into their movement. predecessors while continuing to push the limits The modern tap shoe, featuring metal plates of their art form. Tap is also gaining long-deserved (called “taps”) on the heel and toe, also came into recognition on the concert stage, at major dance widespread use at this time. Although Vaudeville festivals, and in university classrooms. BE PRESENT 11 LEARN Art Form DANCE MOVEMENT Choreography is the series or combination of movements that creates these fundamental patterns in time and space. Like words in a sentence, the individual movements are just as important as the product of their combination. In dance there are many different types of movement. Here are some options to explore as you think about dance. TYPE DEFINITION Sustained An even release of energy that stays constant, either fast or slow, but not both. Percussive Sudden bursts of energy that start and stop quickly. Swinging A drop of energy into gravity that sustains and follows through. Suspended This is the movement at the end of a swing, before gravity takes over. Collapse A sudden and complete release of energy, like fainting and either of the full body or a single body part. Explosive A gathering of energy that is released as a burst of one huge sudden action, either of the full body or a single body part. BE PRESENT 12 LEARN Art Form DANCE ELEMENTS The elements of dance — easily remembered with the use of the acronym BEST: Body, Energy, Space, and Time — can be helpful guides in watching or thinking about dance.