The only problem with Urban Tap’s appearance at the Emerson Majestic last weekend is that the troupe won’t still be there with Caravane this weekend. Otherwise, this fusion of international dance and music, psychedelic projections, and poetry that takes the mesmerizing pervasiveness of rhythm as its unifying theme is one of the most stunning theatrical events to stop here — at least in recent memory. Standing, moving, speaking, and drumming as a shaman at the center of the 90-minute-long evening was the man named Tamango (known as Herbin Van Cayseele when he was here with Riverdance and Dance Umbrella’s " Jazz Tap/Hip-Hop " ). He comes to the stage by way of French Guinea, where he was born and lived for eight years; Paris, where he spent his adolescence; and then Europe and New York, where he honed his talents as an artist dancing for change on the streets and in the clubs. During his travels he’s picked up some extraordinary skills at tap dancing, plus a group of friends from Europe, Latin America, and Africa and a desire to perform with them at his side.
The concert he presents is simple in format: the musicians sit in a half-moon around the edge of a small, miked wooden platform. Behind them on a huge backdrop is projected an ever-moving kaleidoscope of images, some pre-recorded, others layered in live from a video camera that’s set on a stand downstage right or hand-held by Carlos Motta. As in jazz presentations the world over, the performance is partly improvised, with the riffs developing from interaction among the people on stage and being echoed in the dynamic collage of realistic film and wild patterns flickering behind the live action.
Even distinctions between musicians and dancers are superfluous. Tamango sits in behind a set of drums when he’s not dancing; guest vocalist Amina, who was born in Tunisia but raised in France, dances like a whirling dervish at the program’s conclusion. Cabello, the Brasilian capoeira master, also plays an exotic instrument called a bermibau that looks like a long wand with a bulb at its bottom. Weaving back and forth in a trancelike motion after putting down the instrument, he breaks into an amazing series of backflips, shoulder stands, and body levitations.
His pride of manhood is shared by hip-hop dancer James P. " Cricket " Colter, and by Tamango as well. Tamango begins the show by carrying a drum that he pounds in a heartbeat tempo as he strides in the backbent reggae-posture down the aisle from the rear of the theater, He’s a consummate tap performer who can control the tintinnabulation of his feet from loud to soft, from flat-foot engagement with the floor to a delicate dialogue from his heels to his toes, expanding the styles developed by the American tappers to include the full-bodied engagement of the torso and the pelvic shifts of African dance. He even dons an African mask and headdress to transform a version of the sand dance perfected by the American vaudevillean Howard " Sandman " Sims into an act of Earth worship.
Tamango’s stamina is beyond the ordinary, and the entire evening seems to be plugged into his batteries. In fact, there’s so much aural/visual sound and light that it’s hard to tell whether the words that he speaks into a mike are meaningful — I could hardly make out what he was saying. No matter. The identification of commonalties among the cultures of the world, in the movements and the sounds that come from their forms of expression, is enough to envelop the audience. Sometimes the subliminal message, particularly when it’s delivered with such a full measure of the life force, is all that’s necessary for a theatrical revelation.
