Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Bzzz

Dancers in Bzzz.

Dec 12–17, 2023
175 8th Ave, New York, NY 10011, USA

Three decades ago, tap dance was reborn as music. The genius percussionist Savion Glover distrusted what happened above the feet, whose beat he made layered, hard-hitting, and entrancing. The primacy he gave to music has held ever since. But in the last decade, the allied arts have crept back in: first, choreography—thanks to Michelle Dorrance—and now a whole host of styles and idioms that went out with the jazz orchestra and Hollywood’s golden age. Dorrance’s onetime dancer Caleb Teicher, now a choreographer in his own right, has ushered in swing, for example, and, with it, the fey, the feminine, and featherlight cheek and sass, which the ever-charming Teicher reclaims under the rainbow umbrella of gender fluidity. As for this Joyce Theater premiere, Bzzz, it looks like we’re heading to the 70s, if the champion beatboxers among the stellar crew is any clue. —Apollinaire Scherr