‘Counterpoint’,

“It’s a lot less stress and a lot more fun for us!” Tao adds. A YouTube performance (youtu.be/0uJpeUPHLyI) of their video version of “Counterpoint” for the Library of Congress features a grand piano, a portable tap floor, and a backdrop of books as if in someone’s living room.

As Tao launches into the familiar melodies of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Teicher sits on a stool in the corner. When they get up to dance, there is an intense sense that they are listening, not performing. Their taps are like the rhythms of a jazz drummer — unobtrusive, playful. When they move, their body leans into steps and they stretch a leg out and reach into another set of percussive sounds looking almost off balance. The rhythmic underpinning of Gershwin’s music becomes clearer, but so does the luxurious “blueness” of the sounds. It’s not at all the performance you would expect.

“Tap dance uses two senses — sound, as well as movement,” Teicher says. “On its surface, the sound is straightforward, not pitched, like music. But what I am trying to show is a capacity for line and musicality, a maximum of sounds within a rather limited pitch range. I have to believe in the concept that what I am doing matters. That it communicates something. That my sounds also have a musical quality to them.”

“More Forever,” their collaboration with sand and dancers, was developed over a series of residencies in which Tao was in the studio with Teicher and the dancers every minute of the day. “Caleb would offer prompts like, ‘Let’s use swing rhythms,” Tao says. “I came up with my version of swing rhythms, which were really fast and changing, like video game sonics. The dancers would initially be disoriented, but then we would work things out. It was a co-writing experience.”

“We were younger and hadn’t formed our ‘usual way of doing things,’” Teicher says. “It wasn’t transactional — like you play 16 bars of this and then we dance that. It was a messier conversation. Everything was on the table. The process slowed us down and frustrated all of us. But it was an incredible learning experience.”

The Toronto Star wrote of the collaboration: “‘More Forever’ is a complex work of dance theatre. While buoyed by moments of exuberant joy, it is also intimately personal and many layered. Its reflective, occasionally almost melancholy undertow speaks to the fragility of human existence.”

One of the sections from “More Forever” will be performed on stage at the Lensic without the sand and other dancers. In addition to other duets, like “Rhapsody in Blue,” the artists will each present solos. Teicher calls their take on Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca by David Parker “manic;” they will also offer a very traditional piece, “The Coles and Bufalino Soft Shoe,” originally danced by pioneer tappers Honi Coles and Brenda Bufalino.

Tao’s solo moments will include the Valse from Schoenberg’s Five Piano Pieces, Opus 23. “This was the first fully 12-tone piece that Schoenberg ever wrote, but people expecting angry, paradigm-busting un-music may be surprised that those early pieces were all dances,” Tao says. He also will include Art Tatum’s Cherokee as a contrast to the previous piece. “Like Schoenberg, Tatum was a chromatic improviser and harmonic pioneer.” Braham’s Intermezzo, another solo piece to be performed by Tao, echoes the rhythms of a soft shoe dance.

“‘Counterpoint’” is quiet and different,” Teicher says. “It gives you space to decide what to feel about it. It’s about the two of us, our imaginations, and our sense of joy.”