DANCE MASTER
Fresh off winning a ‘genius grant,’ Michelle Dorrance brings her tap company to T.O. festival,
There’s a genius among the dancers at Toronto’s first annual Fall for Dance North festival.
Michelle Dorrance has just been awarded one of 24 MacArthur Fellowships, also known as “genius grants,” which gives her a no-stringsattached $625,000 (U.S.) to spend over five years.
New York-based Dorrance “is the hottest tap artist of her generation and she is reshaping the art form for the 21st century,” according to Fall for Dance North artistic director Il- ter Ibrahimof.
“Her inventive and contemporary voice helps her choreography speak to a universal audience,” he said.
She and her Dorrance Dance company are in town with SOUNDspace. When it debuted in 2013, the New York Times called her “the most promising (choreographer) in tap right now.”
According to the MacArthur Foundation website, in SOUNDspace, “the dancers create an acoustic chamber as the audience is surrounded with textured rhythms created by leather, wood and metal taps on the stage, backstage and balcony.”
Dorrance, 36, has had a varied career since learning to dance as a child, including four years in the off-Broadway hit Stomp, and time with the companies of Savion Glover and Jason Samuels Smith.
She won the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2013, a prestigious prize also won by dance legends Bill T. Jones and Merce Cunningham.
Fall for Dance North includes a wide range of dance offerings with Dance Brazil, India’s Nrityagram, the National Ballet of Canada and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre among others.
Tickets for the three-day festival, which began Tuesday and ends Thursday at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, are all $10 and can be purchased through sonycentre.ca.
Festival executive director Madeleine Skoggard said tickets are selling “beyond our wildest expectations” and expects the event to be sold out.