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Dorrance Dance will perform Oct. 2 at The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts. The show will also be the official opening of Music Worcester’s 2021-22 season. PROVIDED PHOTO
Dorrance Dance opens season for Music Worcester at Hanover Theatre
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Richard Duckett
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Dorrance Dance had a date with Music Worcester last November.
“This is the story, I’m afraid, of a ton of performers,” said Michelle Dorrance — dancer, choreographer, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow, and founder and artistic director of the awardwinning New York City tap dance company that bears her name — about the way the pandemic cut into shows and schedules.
“The arts and performing artists were about the last to return to doing our job in some normal sense of the word,” she said.
As matters have worked out, however, Dorrance Dance will not only be in Worcester to perform at The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts at 8 p.m. Oct. 2, but the show will also be the official opening of Music Worcester’s 2021-22 season.
“I’m so looking forward to it,” Dorrance said. “The reason we do what we do is we believe in live performance.”
The program will feature “SOUNDSpace” (2013) with choreography by Dorrance, solo improvisation by the dancers, additional choreography by Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie and Byron Tittle, and music by Gregory Richardson
There will be seven to eight dancers on the stage, with Richardson on upright bass. Originally a work that explored the unique acoustics of New York City’s St. Mark’s Church through the myriad sounds and textures of the feet, “SOUNDspace” has been adapted and continues to explore what is most beautiful and exceptional about tap dancing — movement as music, Dorrance said. “This is one of my favorite works I’ve ever made,” she sad. St. Mark’s Church is “still a practicing church” that has a dance space and presents
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dance there, she said.
The work epitomizes Dorrance’s belief that tap dance is a musical form of expression.
“Absolutely. Equal parts music and dance for sure,” she said. “As a young person, live music is what inspired me the most.”
Dorrance Dance has musicians on its team as well as tap dancers. Richardson’s bass will be an important component of “SOUNDspace.” “You’ll hear him before you see him,” Dorrance said.
Oct. 2 won’t be her first time stepping foot, so to speak, in Worcester. She was in the cast of “Stomp” when the show previously made one of its visits to The Hanover Theatre. “We had a great time here,” she said.
This summer she was “one of many dancers” who performed a sequence shot at Mechanics Hall for an Apple TV+ remake of “A Christmas Carol,” with Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer.
“We got to hang in Worcester. It was a blast.” Dorrance said she sat in a cigar bar after filming, and “felt I had a Worcester evening that night.”
Opening Music Worcester’s season will also be the start of a small tour for Dorrance Dance.
The pandemic shut down shows, and over the last 18 months “we’re having this reawakening in terms of how oppressive our culture is in terms of racial justice,” Dorrance said. Dance, “Brings people together.”
“SOUNDSpace,” meanwhile, “needs the space and the audience to exist.”
Originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Dorrance is a daughter of M’Liss Dorrance, a former ballet dancer and the founder and director of the Ballet School of Chapel Hill, and Anson Dorrance, a successful women’s soccer coach.
“I grew up doing what both of them do,” Dorrance said, noting that both activities involved the feet. Her parents are also “both deeply musical,” she said.
At her mother’s ballet school, Dorrance took lessons with Gene Medler, “an incredible teacher and tap dance teacher.” She took to tap dance very quickly. “I can barely remember a time when it (tap dance) wasn’t my favorite thing.”
Dorrance performed (including “Stomp”) and taught, and founded Dorrance Dance in 2011. Its goal is “to engage with audiences on a musical and emotional level, and to share the complex history and powerful legacy of this American art form.”
One headline to a story on Dorrance said “Meet Michelle Dorrance, A White Woman Dancer Paying Homage To Black Tap History.” Dorrance thought the headline was good.
“All of us in our generation, regardless of color, we are responsible for the legacy of tap dancing.” That story is “largely untold,” Dorrance said.
“(Through) All the horrors and ugliness of racism and slavery and minstrelsy to what we consider to be American music, tap dance is the story of white culture appropriating black culture. The stories we don’t hear very often — a lot of the originators are Black dancers whose names we don’t know. We all know Fred Astaire, right? Few people know the people who taught Fred Astaire or Ann Miller.”
Dorrance said Mable Lee, a Black American jazz tap dancer, singer and entertainer who died in 2019 at the age of 97 (”we thought she would reach 100, she had so much energy”), was a teacher and a friend. She is very aware of her legacy.
“We have to share the history. Without it we are nothing,” Dorrance said.
Tap dance has been making a revival. Dance Magazine in a piece on trends for the 2020s said, “tap will make a major comeback.”
“I’m so proud people are preserving tap dancing now,” Dorrance said.
“People say, ‘I didn’t realize tap dance was music.’ ‘I didn’t think tap dance could make me cry.’”
Nevertheless, “What wasn’t happening at the time I brought everyone together was work being created for my peers and the generation underneath me … How do we bring this together to push into framing and setting up a lot of the unique voices around me? New York in 2011 was overflowing with unique voices that were tap dancers, and I had a vision for them.”
With that, Dorrance added, “I didn’t think I was starting a business.”
But she was, and being awarded a Genius Grant in 2015 had an impact on several levels.
“It was terrifying, of course,” Dorrance said.
She was also relieved.
“I had gotten into so much debt. Tap dance kind of functions from a space of scarcity. It was terrifying because I am one of many dancers. For me it’s hard to be singled out. Tap dancing is the thing that should be singled out.”
On a practical level, the grant “helped the company survive,” and looking ahead, Dorrance would like establish “a permanent home for tap dance.”
At a recent rehearsal, the realities of being a tenant in New York City were underscored by neighbors complaining.
Tap dance has to be performed on a wooden floor, Dorrance noted.
“We tour with a floor. We’re not gonna dance on plastic.”
With a permanent home for tap dance, “We’ll all get to use it. I have all the dreams. Now I’m telling you, we have to make sure it happens,” Dorrance said.
“We’re becoming more and more aware of how big a name Michelle Dorrance is in the dance world,” said Adrien C. Finlay, executive director of Music Worcester.
After postponement and rescheduling, “We’re just happy it’s finally happening,” he said of both the performance and the opening of the 2021-22 season.
The season will include at least two other acclaimed dance companies, as well as orchestras, chamber groups, jazz, a singer-songwriter, and Music Worcester’s own distinguished Worcester Chorus.
The program will feature “SOUNDSpace,” with choreography by Michelle Dorrance, solo improvisation by the dancers, additional choreography by Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie and Byron Tittle, and music by Gregory Richardson. PROVIDED PHOTO
Worcester native Alicia Witt offers up new album, tour and upcoming book
Craig S. Semon
Worcester Telegram & Gazette USA TODAY NETWORK
Not only did Worcester native Alicia Witt keep her collective wits during COVID, she made the most out of her downtime by staying very busy during the pandemic.
How busy you ask?
She has a new album, “The Conduit,” which came out last week. She kicks off a 14-city musical tour on Oct. 1, starting with The Middle East in Cambridge. And, next week, her combination cookbook/memoir/lifestyle guide, “Small Changes: A RulesFree Guide to Add More Plant-Based Foods, Peace & Power to Your Life,” comes out on Harper Horizons.
“A few days after the Nashville tornado (on March 2-3 2020) I got the call from my agent that we had the offer from Harper Horizon,” Witt, who grew up in West Tatnuck, said on the phone from her Nashville home. “Then we had the world under lockdown. My tour had been canceled so it was the perfect time to just hunker down and instead of focusing on the terrifying world events, just to focus on maybe being able to help people a little bit through all of my various experiences.”
While she is best known as an actress, this is the year in which Witt might break out as an accomplished singer-songwriter and a celebrated book author and she couldn’t be happier,
Witt’s career has included recent roles in “Orange Is the New Black,” “Nashville,” “Twin Peaks” and “Twin Peaks: The Return,” “The Walking Dead,” “Two Weeks Notice,” “88 Minutes” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus”. As she pursued acting, the former child prodigy and classically trained pianist put her musical aspirations on the back burner until she hit her 30s. Now her music is front and center. Arguably, Witt’s new album is her most fully realized showcase as a singer/songwriter to date. “The Conduit” is confident throwback to the classic singersongwriters albums of the ‘70s. Like Carole King, Carly Simon and Karen Carpenter before her, Witt is intimate and unguarded, honest and real. Her elegant, understated piano playing enhances her probing, precise words while lavish (but never overpowering) strings make it sound like nothing on mainstream pop music today, which is totally intentional, she said.
“The ‘70s singer-songwriters, that’s a genre I can listen to all day long, every day. So my hope was it would have a ‘70s retro feeling and there’s even a line in one of the songs, ‘love songs from the ‘70s,’” Witt said. “And, then at the same time, we have a couple of tracks, ‘Face Change’ and ‘The Ocean,’ which we could have veered into that genre but I liked the direction that we were going better so I didn’t want to uproot that and make it more ‘70s. So I love those songs, too.”
Witt’s previous albums are 2018’s “15,000 Days,” 2015’s “Revisionary History,” 2012’s “Live At Rockwood” and a selftitled EP in 2009. But “The Conduit” might prove to be her mainstream breakthrough.
“The fact that that all had to be put on hold, it gave the coproducers and I enough time to really muse on what we wanted each of those songs to be,” Witt said. “When we finally did get into the studio, it was the smoothest recording process in the world because we had already done mockups, digitally, and we knew what we were creating.”
The album explores the personal connections individuals make in their lives, some which are immediate, some which are years, even decades, in the making.
“It’s the notion that we’re all conduits for someone and if we look back over our life at the relationships we have, the good and disappointing, everything leads to where we are right now,” Witt explained. “And once I got to that notion that you are the conduit, that made so much sense to me and then I thought, well I think maybe I have a lot of songs that have something to do with this con-
Alicia Witt begins a tour behind her new album, “The Conduit,” in Cambridge Oct. 1. PROMOTIONAL PHOTO
cept.” Witt lives by the philosophy that the more personal you are in your music, the better. “There are song songs that are very specifically personal. They’re not all 100 percent autobiographic but what is true is “Small Changes,” that every song on this album Alicia Witt's first started from that place,” Witt book. PROMOTIONAL said. “I think any great music PHOTO really leads you to a place of inspiration, hopefully. So a good song can spur you on and help you figure something out in your own life.” Witt is especially proud of “Last Surviving Son,” a song she co-wrote with “American Idol” runner-up Crystal Bowersox. “This was a melody that was knocking around in my head for
Alicia Witt has a new album, “The Conduit,” which came out last week, and next week, her book “Small Changes: A Rules-Free Guide to Add More Plant-Based Foods, Peace & Power to Your Life,” comes out on Harper Horizons. TRAVIS COMMEAU
Studio Theatre Worcester returns with stunning production of ‘Doubt’
Kevin T. Baldwin
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
4 stars
This review takes on a slightly personal perspective.
In March 2020, mere days before the nation shut down due to COVID-19, I was fortunate enough to preview a performance of Studio Theatre Worcester’s production of John Patrick Shanley’s “DOUBT, A Parable.”
By this point, with as many cancelations as I was receiving, I was anticipating (but hoping I was wrong) that the production was going to be canceled.
Unfortunately, I was right.
However, what I witnessed was still an impressive “rehearsal,” which unfolded as if an actual live performance. At the time, I thought this was a show ready for its premiere. I could not see it getting ANY better.
Fortunately, I was wrong.
Five-hundred and sixty days later (more or less), the resurrected STW show is back and better than ever.
Featuring the same outstanding cast of four and a newer, more streamlined set, “Doubt” premiered Sept. 24 in its new performance space at the Salem Covenant Church in Worcester and should not, cannot, MUST NOT be missed.
Each actor brings a fully formed character to life and drives Shanley’s script with a grim if undeniable believability.
Set in the fall of 1964 at the fictitious St. Nicholas Church School, the play centers around a priest, Father Flynn (Todd Vickstrom), who becomes bitterly embroiled in defending himself against accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct with a young African American male student. His accuser is Sister Aloysius (Alexa Cadete), the principal at the school.
Thanks to the superb approach each actor takes to their respective characters, Vickstrom and Cadete are successful at illuminating the highly toxic atmosphere created by “Doubt.”
Vickstrom balances his performance between a priest who may be innocent, a priest who may be guilty and priest who may or may not be guilty but, in any event, is still harboring a dangerous secret either for himself or someone he is trying to protect.
Sister Aloysius, a staunch conservative Catholic, has many presumptions about the guilt of the more progressive Father Flynn. She is certain, or at least convinced, about his being a predator serving in the guise of a man of the cloth. But she also has not one, single
Presented by Studio Theatre Worcester. Written by John Patrick Stanley. Directed by John Wayland Somers. Performances: Oct. 1 and 2 at 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 3 at 2 p.m. at Salem Covenant Church, 215 Mountain Street East, Worcester. General admission: Pay what you want. Cast includes: Todd Vickstrom, Alexa Cadete, June Dever, Alexandra Barber. Todd Vickstrom as Father Flynn and Alexandra Barber as Sister James in a scene from “Doubt, A
Parable.” AMY MAE PHOTOGRAPHY
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ounce of concrete, credible proof. Only a theory. Still, she persists and, ultimately, is successful at creating enough “Doubt” that Flynn’s vocation becomes jeopardized.
Shanley’s story intentionally never reveals if Flynn actually molested Donald Muller, the Black youth in question. Instead, the focus on the youth takes on its own added dimension in a fierce exchange between Sister Aloysius and the boy’s mother, Mrs. Muller (June Dever).
Here we learn that, before Flynn, Donald’s life was already at risk by his rejecting parents and neighborhood kids who saw him as having a virtual bullseye on his back.
In 1964, in any community (not just the urban inner-city African American communities) the term “Dead Man Walking” would most likely be applicable to this young man’s “future” and Mrs. Muller is fully aware of it.
It is clear, from some “in between the lines” moments provided by Shanley’s dialogue, that Mrs. Muller blames herself for producing a child both she and her husband see as a freak or “mistake”... but she still loves her child enough ... JUST enough ... to want to shelter him, even if it is by placing him in the care and supervision of a presumed sexual predator.
The one person struggling the most at determining the validity of the accusations made against Flynn is the young, pretty and thoroughly optimistic Sister James (Alexandra Barber). She is a perfect foil for the jaded, cynical Sister Aloysius.
But is her wanting to believe the possibility of Flynn’s innocence reflective of her naivete or faith? With the welfare and ultimate fate of a young person hanging in the balance, where should her (or anyone’s) cynicism or faith be placed?
These questions are left intentionally open by Shanley’s script and under the interpretive direction and guidance of the show’s director, John Somers. The set, courtesy of David N. Farreh, is simplicity itself but placed within an actual church allows the church itself to become its own central character in the story.
The element of overwhelming speculation, of “doubt,” creates an atmosphere of such toxicity that eventually the innocent might as well BE guilty because judgment becomes rendered before the trial even begins.
Was Flynn guilty of his supposed crime? Given the long history of such predators lurking within the Catholic church, it would not be surprising.
But the fact is: we do not know. Only two people know for sure what happened during the “seclusion” of Father Flynn and young Donald Muller. Father Flynn, the boy ... and perhaps a black bird or two. But none are talking.
The show is approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. Admission is pay what you want: “We feel that this show deserves to be seen by all and are excited to increase access to the arts to everyone,” according to Studio Theatre Worcester.
Kevin T. Baldwin is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA)
June Dever as Mrs. Muller with Alexa Cadete as Sister Aloysius in “Doubt, A Parable.”
AMY MAE PHOTOGRAPHY
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quite a while and it was special to me and I was so grateful that when we had our writing session it just turned into the song that it became,” Witt said. “It’s such a complicated song and that’s the song that I personally toiled the most over, in terms of just making certain that every element of the arrangement was what I wanted, like the final string part that fades out like all the lights just going out.” Witt said there are a couple of songs on the album which the real-life inspiration does know they inspired it and then many others where they don’t.
While listeners will immediately gravitate to songs like “Talk to You,” “The Conduit,” “Down She Goes” and “Chasing Shadows,” other notable tunes include “Any Midnight,” which sounds like it could erupt into an Elton John-style honky tonk piano number at any moment, and the album’s stunning, bare-bones closing, “Someday,” which starts with Witt singing acapella.
“I’m happy with the way that one turned out,” Witt said of “Someday,” “And I’m grateful that it ended up being on the record because I love that it’s just piano and vocals. I wouldn’t really want anything else on it.”
Although she has had a hand in producing her last couple of Christmas songs (“I’m Not Ready for Christmas” and “Why Christmas”), “The Conduit” marks the first time Witt serves as a producer on all of the tracks on one of her albums.
“I wanted to produce this album by myself with the co-producers so that every song felt like it was true to how I heard it in my head. And those strings make me so happy,” Witt said.
Another Witt milestone on the record, the single “Chasing Shadows” landed on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts and stayed there for five weeks.
“If I had been there for one week, I would have been ecstatic to be able to forever say I was a Billboard charting artist, but I never imaged it was going to be there for five weeks,” Witt said.
During the pandemic, Witt did a series of live-stream concerts from her Nashville home. Starting on Friday in Cambridge, she will be playing in front of an audience in the same room for the first time since the pandemic hit.
So is she ready to go back on the road?
“I am so, so ready, not nervous, just eager to do it. The only thing that I’m honestly aware of is that people are anxious about coming out and so I would like to encourage people to go ahead and come on out if they’re nervous. We’re definitely taking all the protocols and all the precautions that can be taken,” Witt said. “I can’t wait to get out. I just hope people come out to see the show because I don’t know when I will be able to hit the road again anytime soon, and my poor agent has booked it four times now. This is the fourth time she rescheduled it.”
Witt is also making the rounds promoting her book.
“Small Changes” is not your typical self-help book; Witt doesn’t pretend to be self-help expert or know-it-all fitness guru but a friendly, reassuring voice sharing her personal ex-
Alicia Witt will perform Oct. 1 at The Middle East in Cambridge.
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perience with fads, diets, exercise and veganism (although she’s a sucker for an occasional piece of salmon) and saying this works for me; if you make a few changes in your life, it may work for you. ”People don’t want to be lectured. They don’t want to be told how to eat or what is right for their body and their lifestyle,” Witt said.
“And I think that of the most well-meaning so-called help gurus can repulse exactly the people that need the help the most by giving them a list of rules and regulations and actually telling them that you might as well just quit if you’re not going to be 100 percent vegan or 100 percent macrobiotic or 100 percent whatever … You can change a few small things at a time and you do not need to drastically overhaul your own life. And you’re going to start to feel and notice the difference.”
Witt made her acting debut as Alia Atreides in David Lynch’s “Dune” when she was 7, and she said she’s eager to see the new “Dune” that came out in October.
“I think it looks fantastic and I think it also is paying homage to David’s original,” Witt said. “I would love to be a part of the ‘Dune’ universe again, like a different role or something. I love that world. It’s a magic world and I’m glad I got to be a part of it, the original.”
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