The Center Will Not Hold review – a compelling conversation between US dance styles

Tap, waacking, jookin’, footwork and jit are among the street and club styles that come together as Michelle Dorrance showcases a startling array of forms and talent

The last big US tap dance star to make a splash in the UK was Savion Glover, whose performances centred on extended solos of intense virtuosity. Michelle Dorrance, tap’s current hot property, is a completely different proposition. Her spirit is collegiate, all about collaboration (she was on the Sadler’s Wells stage last month with ballet star Tiler Peck). Dorrance’s vibe is community, and dance being a conversation between different styles, artists and eras.

She has co-created The Center Will Not Hold with choreographer and B-girl Ephrat Asherie, and with a superlative cast including Charles Riley, AKA Lil Buck, pioneer of Memphis Jookin’, who was one of the first dancers to go viral, for his duet with cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Saint-Saëns’ The Swan. Lil Buck’s movement slides and glides on the tips of his trainer-toes, seemingly not touching the floor, like one of those magnetic trains that hovers over its tracks.

But Riley is not the only startling talent. There is also 22-year-old Caleb Lawrence Jackson, whose specialisms are tap and Chicago footwork, legs blurring as if infected with the dancing plague, everything on fast-fast-forward. And the entrancing Tomoe “Beasty” Carr (specialisms: hip-hop, house, waacking), who moves like a bolt of mercurial lightning that’s still deciding where to strike.

As you can tell from this lineup, The Center Will Not Hold is not just a tap show. It draws on a wealth of dance styles that have emerged through Black street and club culture – the knotty footwork of Detroit jit is another, and there’s even some swing – and has live percussion from John Angeles, getting in the midst of things with his electric drum pads slung round his shoulders.

With all this explosive talent, however, what’s interesting is that the show is deliberately low-key: a shadowy stage, a simmering score, a rhythm that quietly gets under your skin. In solos and duos, technical genius flares and recedes. There is an element of holding back, even in the sound of their shoes – Dorrance’s taps are mellow and fluttering (there’s a choice about how they mic this stuff up, and the type of floor). It’s a decision not to be sharp and bright and starry. It’s not showboating but showcasing, both the evolution of dance forms and a compelling cast of performers.