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• Michelle Dorrance

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1979-
Birth Date: Sep 12, 1979

Place of Birth: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Michelle Dorrance, tap dancer, choreographer, and one of the most sought after dancers of her generation forging new directions in tap choreography, was born of mixed Irish-English-Scottish parentage. Her father was a soccer coach who led the Women's U.S. team to the World Cup in 1991, and her mother was a ballet dancer who was a member of Eliot Feld's American Ballet Company. Dorrance was exposed to both of her parents' passions. In the early 1990s, she began tap classes with Gene Medler and joined his company, the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble (NCYTE). She left North Carolina to attend New York University, where she graduated from the Gallatin Program with a self-created major that focused on American democracy and race within the arts. While at NYU, she attended James Buster Brown's tap jams at Swing 46 and was discovered by Savion Glover, who recruited her to become a founding member of his company Ti Dii. Dorrance quickly became a distinctive presence on the New York tap scene, described by New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning as a dancer with "an untameable, tomboyish force of nature . . . rangy, skinny, and unpredictable."

Her style of tap dance can be gleaned by her shoes: from her Capezio K360s with character heels to her heavy LaDuca oxfords and Bloch test models, she prefers hard-soled, fairly heavy tap shoes which she breaks in with a "regiments of rudiments": first by executing hard, staccato cramp rolls; next, by spending twenty minutes dancing on just the balls of her feet, to break in the shank; then, by doing a series of wings to help ensure flexibility at the ankle. "I do a hundred shuffles in a row every direction," she told Laura DeSilva in Dance Spirit. That technique has also been turned to choreography for the North Carolina Tap Ensemble and for her pick-up company, Michelle Dorrance and Friends. Writing in Dance Magazine about Dorrance's Music Box, performed in Tap City 2005 at the Joyce Theater Jenai Cutcher commented that the work diffused gender boundaries with its combination of movement and costume: "Nine dancers-- six of them women in dresses-- bent their knees, assumed a wide stance, and in eight quarter-note heel drops illustrated a concept that may be unique to the feminine tap-dancing experience: the sugar and the spice.

Dorrance speculates that one advantage to being a woman is the freedom to move between traits traditionally considered masculine or feminine. It is now perfectly acceptable for women to traverse a wide range of styles." Dorrance's expertise in choreographing large-group tap works to such popular tunes as the Beatles "Eleanor Rigby," has made her a widely sought-after choreographer. She also toured in the long-running off-Broadway show Stomp! with a cast of mainly men, playing the role called Bin Bitch, a character with a tough demeanor, who "wears a pissed off, unimpressed look on her face when the jokers of the cast try to show off. Though she's a newbie, she has the dance chops to stand up against the more experienced cast members. She's intense-- her furiously fast footwork alternates with beating out rhythms on trash can lids, hollow pipes, matchboxes, and Zippo lighters." Dorrance appeared on the front cover of the May 2008 Dance Magazine, with a feature article by Emily Macel who wrote: She's tall and slender with a youthful face and a bright, toothy grin . . . She may look young and delicate, but she's no waif. Power pulses through her body." Josh Hilberman, who worked with Dorrance for more than fifteen years, summed her up concisely when he stated: "She has technical power that is huge. She has monstrous technique. She has a funny, quirky view of the world. She falls between the young killer women in high heels and the guys…. [She is] a pluralist for her ability to galvanize influences from all over."

In 2011 Dorrance received a BESSIE Award for her choreography Remembering Jimmy [Slyde] and Three to One. In 2012, she was the first tap choreographer to receive a Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship; in 2013, she became the seventh recipient of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award; and in 2014 she received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, given to risk-taking mid-career artists. The Blues Project , a collaboration with esteemed blues woman Toshi Reagon and veteran tap dancers Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards and Derick Grant, had its premiere in 2013 in the Doris Duke Theater at Jacob's Pillow. In 2015, Dorrance received the prestigious MacArthur "genius" Award, given to artists pushing the boundaries of their fields and improving the world in imaginative and unexpected ways.

[Source: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010); Laura De Silva, "Tough Breaks, Dance Sprit, May/June 2006, vol. 10, 5, p. 69; (Emily Macel, "Tap Out Loud: the multitalented, multifaceted Michelle Dorrance is stompin' up a storm, Dance Magazine May 2008)