What is tap dancing? It is basically people who can’t sit still when they hear stimulating music. It is an urge to contribute, in the most primitive way, to the music—like clapping your hands or hollering. It helps if you have rhythm, and it is especially effective when the dancers have metal on the bottom of their shoes.
“Miles Davis Animated,” a Fringe Festival event on Saturday night at the Hochstein, featured tap dancers Cheryl Johnson and Laurie Cole. Just like the program promised, “They animated the music of Miles with percussive rhythm and emotional nuance.”
The band was confident enough to let the party unfold. Trumpeter and cartoonist Dave Chisholm led a quintet with pianist Greg Woodsbie, saxophonist Colin Gordon, the great bassist David Arenius, and drummer Aaron Staebell, while pages from Chisholm’s graphic novel, Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound, were projected above. Chisholm ran out of copies of his book, so I ordered one on Amazon.
We stepped inside the Strasenburgh Planetarium on Friday night for the first time since Personal Effects performed there in 1987. James Tabbi and Gerry Szymanski composed, programmed, and performed “Synambient Deep Fields” at 20 BPM. Of course, the highlight of the show is always when the North Star Ball comes up out of the pit in the center of the room.