New York on Tap, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Tappers Just Keep on Going
By Nadine Meisner
18 June 2002

Whatever it is deep inside the human psyche that connects with percussive rhythm, it creates a raging hunger for dance forms such as flamenco, kathak, Irish step dance and tap. New York on Tap, an ad hoc collection of tappers and live jazz combo, played to sold-out houses and could probably have continued for several weeks more. Jovially compared by Carolene Hinds and the 74-year-old Will Gaines (who also tapped a few dance numbers), the performers were mostly British (despite the title), led by Americans.

Among the Americans were Barbara Duffy and Marshall Davies. A riveting performer, Duffy began with “Soldier’s Hymn,” dancing her own choreography of quiet and unhurried syncopation in conversation with the music’s rumbling rumba. Occasionally she introduced more ferocious phrases, along with items from the tapper’s repertoire of tricks, such as splayed feet like a doll on ice or a soft sideways ruffle.

By the end, as she marked out some gentle swishes, punctuated by a few leisurely staccatos, we were her slaves. Duffy started her career in “show tap”: the hybrid Broadway form popularized by stars such as Fred Astaire, where tap is diluted with jazz and social dance. But she fell in love with “rhythm tap,” the pure African-American form developed at the beginning of the 20th century, which concentrates on the vastly varied scope of a tapping foot and which, injected with hip hop influences, is currently enjoying a revival.

In “Leon Collins Remembered,” she and Marshall Davies paid tribute to her late dance teacher, with an a cappella duet of strict unison, marking out filigree foot patterns that sometimes quietened into the most delicate steps, as if they were moving on eggs or mimicking pattering rain drops. Duffy has an attractively direct manner and Rubens-esque outline; Davies is a super-cool minimalist, all energy channeled into the dense inflections of his feet, his hunched-down gaze fixed on the floor. In his own solos, his relaxed self-absorption was perversely compelling, although the hard-edged speed of his footwork for “In a Sentimental Mood” seemed unfeelingly at odds with Duke Ellington’s smooth sound loops. This was improvised, hard-edged virtuosity, afflicted by a monotone garrulousness that blighted some other performers. But there was a real distinction from Diane Hampstead, whose elegant deftness contrasted with Junior Laniyan’s square angles and jerky looseness. Their tap dialogue had a competitive edge in which she gave as good as she got.

The Clark Brothers, who arrived for the climactic finale, dressed in archetypal dazzling-white tie and tails. Suave masters of tap, song, piano-playing and clowning (African Americans who, like Gaines, have settled in Britain), Steve is aged 77, and Jimmy 79; but then, tappers just keep on going.

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