Dance is everywhere these days. It gloriously, powerfully, and playfully saturates social media (would TikTok have even become a thing without the dance videos?). Television commercials team with dance sequences, people are losing it over K-Pop choreography, and dancers, dance teams, and dance crews dominate competitions like America’s Got Talent.

The joy of dance—watching it and doing it—is so universally human that you can find people moving, stepping, shaking, and twirling in cultures and communities all over the globe. We now know that dance provides emotional and physical release, floods us with dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins (known as “the happy hormones”), and makes us feel connected and alive.  

In short, dancing isn’t just good for us. It is us. Dance is life. 

We need to watch it, and we need to do it. 

Who is Dorrance Dance? 

This month, you’ll get the opportunity to experience the power of dance when one of the world’s most celebrated and phenomenal tap companies steps onto the Peace Concert Hall stage for an electrifying evening of rhythm and music. Dorrance Dance, founded by tap pioneer Michelle Dorrance, calls NYC home but the company tours extensively with the sole purpose (pun intended) of celebrating the legacy, artistry, and possibilities of this uniquely American dance form. Among the nation’s legendary stages, Dorrance Dance has toured The Joyce Theater, New York City Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Kennedy Center, and Jacob’s Pillow. They’ve performed internationally around Europe as well as in Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  

Wherever they go, the true roots of American tap history and evolution go with them. 

Tap dance emerged when African percussive dance and Irish step dancing met each other on Southern American plantations in the 1700s. Jigs, juba, reels, and djembe steps melded into what would become the dance of jazz music in the 1920s, made famous by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers. Broadway embraced tap dance after Eubie Blake’s musical Shuffle Along blew everyone’s hair off with its shockingly intricate footwork. Tap dance went mainstream then, and experienced an exciting revitalization in the 1980s, when the world fell in love with Gregory Hines, and, in the 1990s, Savion Glover.  

Between the rises of Hines and Glover, Michelle Dorrance spent years in Chapel Hill, NC, studying with Gene Medler, an acclaimed youth tap instructor and devoted disciple to the history and importance of tap dance. He introduced her to the American greats of tap dance including the Nicholas Brothers, whose “staircase scene” from the vintage movie Stormy Weather recently went viral, Buster Brown, and "Peg Leg” Bates—South Carolina’s most famous tapper.  

Medler instilled in Dorrance the drive to preserve and respect the roots of tap dance and push it relentlessly forward. For their Peace Center engagement, Dorrance Dance celebrates Medler’s influence with A Swing Suite, the centerpiece of their program, choregraphed by company members and former Medler students Elizabeth Burke and Luke Hickey who will join the company on the tour stop in Greenville to perform their masterpiece live. 

Dorrance Dance at the Peace Center 

Tap dance, as Dorrance explains it, is where the performer is at once both musician and dancer, carrying the mantle of all the tappers who came before. Beat, rhythm, community, cross-cultural expression, survival, celebration, revolution, resistance ... within tap dance lies the crux of human existence in all its emotional range. Movement makes the music of what it means to be alive.

Their program also features Dorrance’s work SOUNDspace | REDUX, some of her most popular and acclaimed choreography. SOUNDspace | REDUX, explores the layered, unexpected, and intricate percussion that can come from many dancers in a simple pair of tap shoes.  

Dorrance Dance appears in Peace Concert Hall March 28 for a single performance of SOUNDspace | REDUX and A Swing Suite.  

Get tickets now to experience one of the greatest tap dance companies in the world, right here in Greenville.