Jazz Tap Ensemble Moves to the Rhythm

The foot is sometimes quicker than the eye. This is particularly true in the quicksilver tapping of dancers Sam Weber and Channing Cook Holmes, members of the celebrated Jazz Tap Ensemble, who served up a veritable feast of fancy footwork (old and new), Saturday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.

Under the artistic direction of the ever mellow Lynn Dally, Jazz Tap proved that the art of tap is alive and well, kicking, in Southern California. Accompanied by a trio of crack musicians--bassist Eric Ajaye, pianist-trumpeter Dave Scott and music director Jerry Kalaf--the company embodies the essence of sublimely integrated music and dance.

Dally, no slouch in the dance department, premiered her “Solo,” breezing through a laid-back turning sequence and sets of smooth step clusters to Ajaye’s expressive riffs. Carol Christiansen, new to the troupe, performed her “One Note Samba,” a deliciously jaunty, body-slapping solo, bringing out the syncopated stylings of Antonio Carlos Jobim, as Scott turned up the furnace on trumpet, with Weber and Holmes beefing up Kalaf’s sizzling percussion by hammering congas.

Also percussively new: “Hands On,” a kinetic jam with company members (including the delightfully peppy guest artist, Dormeshia Sumbry) on all kinds of drums, before taking tap turns to the driving beat in a fusillade of slides and shuffling. Like a rumbling, roaring bullet train, this work arrived rocking.

Weber, a dizzying cross between “Seinfeld’s” Kramer and Nijinsky, displayed his balletic form in hot leaps and spiky spins in his premiere, “All the Things You Are.”

No Jazz Tap program seems complete without a tribute to Thelonious Monk or the troupe’s Jimmy Slyde-created work “Interplay.” These “tour de taps” steamed with style, especially when Holmes tore up the floor in a barrage of brilliant satin-like, full-stage glides.

This troupe, unlike other local entities, is in no danger of getting tapped out.