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The Globe and Mail, Toronto,
Canada - October 16, 2007
A PERFECT MATCH OF FLYING FEET
AND FINGERS.
Take that, Michael Flatley
- Feet and fingers fly at Celtic performance.
By Paula Citron
Tapeire - Driven by Rhythm
At the Music Hall (Toronto)
The Celtic dance and music show Tapeire
- Driven by Rhythm is all about virtuoso flying
feet and flying fingers. The feet are courtesy of
Irish-born, Edinburgh-based James Devine, who is
in Guinness World Records as the fastest dancer
in the world with 38 taps per second. The fingers
belong to Tapeire's musical trio, which includes
Canadian superstar fiddler Ashley MacIsaac and two
talented Scots - percussionist Paul Jennings and
harpist Phamie Gow.
The show is the brainchild of Devine,
who has been very clever in finding a variety of
engaging ways to stage what is essentially a one-trick
pony.
Devine's tap dances are presented
in amusing contexts that are mostly playoffs between
himself and the musicians, with the latter getting
their own solos to sweeten the mix.
For lack of better words, there is
an endearing bashfulness about the production in
its apparent lack of ego. It is almost as if four
young artists have come before us because they genuinely
want to share their gifts. The audience is utterly
disarmed, and we want to hug the performers for
their artistic skill as well as for their seemingly
innocent enthusiasm.
When Tapeire premiered at the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival in 2006, it earned the record as
the longest-running sold-out show in that venerable
event's history.
Devine has created an historical narrative
of sorts for Tapeire, using an intriguing montage
of archival black-and-white photographs and movie
images as a backdrop that becomes a journey through
Irish dance history. Each projection triggers off
a live dance or music vignette.
We learn about the sean-nos, the impromptu
music and dance evenings in country cottages. We
see pictures of the dancing masters who travelled
throughout Ireland teaching the peasants their repertoire
of dance steps.
The final numbers of the show deal
with theatrical tap dance. The rigid rules of Irish
dance are cast off, which allows Devine to luxuriate
in the exhilarating freedom of his unique step/tap/hip
hop fusion. The dance then becomes all about improvisation
and experimentation, with his musicians matching
him beat for beat.
Devine was a champion Irish dancer
who graduated to the lead in Michael Flatley's Lord
of the Dance show. In one very funny sequence, he
gets his revenge against the step-dance straitjacket.
First, there is a projection of the bizarre rules
of an actual Irish dance contest, such as those
to do with wearing the proper underwear. Then Devine
as the dancer, MacIsaac as the announcer and Jennings
as the judge recreate the goings-on at a feis (an
official Irish dance contest), which include performing
to the exactitude of a metronome, hands held stiffly
at the dancer's sides.
The dancer's shoes are literally wired
for sound, and the cables run from two hip packs
down to his silver heels. The taps we hear are only
the ones he makes. No recordings pump up the volume.
Whether mirroring the sean-nos, where he performs
with a floor brush, or imitating the dancing masters
by tapping on the smallest possible surface, in
this case a platform that barely fits his feet,
Devine is a master of his craft. His eye-boggling
repertoire of riffs, slides, click-togethers, jumps,
crossovers, toe-tips, as well as his amazing high
kick, are all done in a loose and lanky style that
shows a body at perfect ease.
As for the charismatic MacIsaac, he
fiddles fast and furiously, but the Cape Breton
native is also capable of extreme sweetness in the
occasional ballad.
It may be a trick of lighting, but
the dust motes seem to become smoke pouring off
his fiery fiddle. The surprise of the evening is
MacIsaac's performance of a classical-music interlude
that indicates the show's transition from traditional
to theatrical dance. He plays solo versions of Albinoni's
Adagio and Vivaldi's summer storm from The Four
Seasons, which are staggering because he has learned
them by ear and is not classically trained. MacIsaac
may have the unfortunate reputation of a Celtic
enfant terrible, but nobody can deny his astonishing
talent.
Jennings can turn anything into music,
augmenting his drum set with pots and pans, spoons,
the tambourine, a typewriter and, of course, the
traditional Celtic bodhran. In Gow's capable hands,
her electrified harp easily shifts between heavy
metal and ethereal celestial music. Both Jennings
and Gow are laid-back performers who seem to feel
the music in their very bones.
There is real chemistry between the
three musicians and Devine. The show is anchored
in their symbiosis because they feed each other
the rhythms.
Together, they create a winning evening
that is all about talent and never about artifice.
Tapeire's Canadian tour travels next
to Markham, Ont., (tonight) and ends in Moncton
(Nov. 4,) touching down in seven Ontario and six
Maritime cities en route. For details, visit http://www.tapeire.com.
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