Bach On Tap Shoes: Tiptoeing Through The ‘Goldberg Variations’

BY TOM HUIZENGA

 

Although Johann Sebastian Bach was probably no tap-dancer, he did know something about dancing. The giguesmenuets and courantes that populate his various suites are, essentially, stylized dance movements that can leap off the page in a good performance.

Any leaping in this 4-minute video premiere belongs to a real tap-dancer, Caleb Teicher, also a gifted choreographer. He improvises to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, played by pianist Conrad Tao, also a composer, who just premiered his new orchestral work, Everything Must Go with the New York Philharmonic last week.

With a backdrop of stacked lumber at the Steinway Factory in New York, Teicher’s stage is a nothing more than a pair of wooden pallets. In Bach’s opening “Aria,” Teicher taps lightly. After all, the apocryphal back story has it that Bach wrote the music to soothe the nerves of an insomniac count. As the languid melody unfolds, Teicher punctuates by scraping the toe of his tap shoe across the planks and gently caressing the wood with his sole.

When Bach’s first, and fleet, variation kicks in, no one could be sleeping. Teicher slaps the pallets with lightning speed, leaping from one to the other for contrast, matching Tao, note for accelerated note. The swirl of the music finally spins him off his platform back to solid ground, to a world where creative souls dream about what else can be done with the sturdy, transformative music of Bach.

(The video comes courtesy of the New York Philharmonic.)

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The finale piece in Dorothy Anderson Wasserman's exhibit "The Carnival of the Animals," at Gallery 110 in Seattle. Photo by Lauren Gallup.

‘The Carnival of the Animals’ comes to life this October in Gallery 110

Four walls of Gallery 110 in Seattle have been transformed with dancing animals displayed within colorful, boxed scenes that jump to life against the otherwise white space.
They are sculptures of human dancers, costumed like animals, the ensemble of Dorothy Anderson Wasserman’s latest exhibit, The Carnival of the Animals. It’s a study of music, dance, theater and visual art combined. Continue Reading ‘The Carnival of the Animals’ comes to life this October in Gallery 110