Spotlight: Part II - Michelle Dorrance

Michelle’s commitment brought her to St. Louis several times to attend the Tap Festival that Robert Reed had created and developed over many years. There she met all the great performers from Gregory Hines and others, and through her nascent admiration of people like Savion Glover, who revolutionized the approach to the material, the possibilities began to be clear to her. The sophisticated compositional forms began to spawn creative ideas that she slowly brought to life.

Seeing tap as a music composition she realized that how and where you tapped with the feet created different sounds that together with other interpreters created complex compositions. Tap being very much improvisational fascinated her.

The funk and the joy of it sent her on her way and today she is engrossed in Exciting new ideas that expand the idiom beyond its possibilities. With it they are inviting new audiences to discover this incredible American art form. The time is now for all of us to see this. Her new projects, some of which might be seen in St Louis, share the stage with singers such as Aaron Marcellus or, perhaps, four cellists that bring the entire stage alive and enchant the audience as they discover their new found love for the possibilities of tap dancing.

St. Louis is special to her for all that it gave her with the old guard and the discoveries of some new ideas.

— Michael Uthoff, Artistic Director, Dance St. Louis