The Center Will Not Hold: A Dorrance Dance Production

Launches 2025 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Season

By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 28, 2025

The Center Will Not Hold: A Dorrance Dance Production
Jacob’s Pillow Dance
Ted Shawn Theatre, McCain Stage
June 25-29, 2025

Created and Directed by Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance
Choreography by Ephrat Asherie, Manon Bol, Tommy “Beasty” Carr, Michelle Dorrance, Zakhele “Bboy Swazi” Grabowski, Fritzlyn Hector, Donetta “Lil Bit” Jackson, Erika Jimbo, Richie Maguire, Michael Manson, Jr., Ron Myles, Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, Matthew “Megawatt” West, with solo improvisations by the dancers.

Artistic Advisors, Brenda Bufalino and Buddah Stretch

Original Music by Donovan Dorrance

Live Percussion by John Angeles

Lighting, Kathy Kaufman

Sound. Christopher Marc

The 2025 Jacob’s Pillow season was launched in the Ted Shawn Theatre by a Festival favorite the Dorrance Dance company. Although the signature tap dance of Michelle Dorrance was an element, the evening long performance “The Center Will Not Hold” was unlike anything previously presented by the company. The norm of her approach is to provide an overall format leaving room for individuality, improvisation and collaboration. Here those elements have been pushed to the max, much to the delight of an enthralled audience.

In 2022 Dorrance, and long time friend and collaborator, Ephrat Asherie, created a brief duet, Little Room. They were advised by tap legend, Brenda Bufalino, that it seemed like an excerpt from a longer piece.

In Pillow Notes by Janet Schraeder she states that “Exploring themes of isolation and solidarity The Center engages the expressive capabilities of footwork-driven and percussive dance practices to convey emotion and share a narrative, abstractly.”

The title of the dance derives from a line from "The Second Coming," the poem by William Butler Yeats.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

    Are full of passionate intensity.

With aesthetic synergy sparked by Asherie the resultant work manifests an elevated level of growth and maturity beyond the benchmark as the foremost practitioner and advocate of tap. Dorrance celebrates and preserves tap as an indigenous art form that developed from the African Diaspora and community dance forms.

While Dorrance has preserved tradition she has long embraced the influence of hip hop, break dancing, house and street movements. For this singular work the collaborators recruited an all star ensemble of masters of individual regional styles. In a post performance discussion they described the creative process. Dorrance remarked that she was astonished that these renowned artists, several of whom have their own companies, agreed to participate in the project.

They represent West Coast Wacking, Detroit Jit, Chicago Footwork, and Litefeet which emerged in Harlem in the early 2000s.

In the studio “We learned from each other.” While Dorrance and Asherie provided the overall structure, with music by her younger brother, Donovan Dorrance, the individual stylists choreographed their elements. That resulted in an overview of the cutting edge of emerging dance both on the street and in clubs. Of particular note was the precision and degree of difficulty of percussion driven movement. While tap entails intricate footwork in this expanded work the human body is deconstructed with limbs reconfigured in ever possible manner.

The evening commenced with a solo by the remarkable percussionist John Angeles. Seated at a table it was unclear how he was making sound. When he was later joined by Asherie and Dorrrance for a stunning trio it was more obvious that they were beating on a table which was amplified by microphones. In other segments of the piece he moved about the stage with a snare drum suspended from his neck. He twirled the sticks with dramatic flourish. There was also a conventional drum kit which was used in the dance. His inventive percussion was integral to the work.

Side-by-side Dorrance and Asherie appeared within a tight square of light. Notably, they were not wearing tap shoes that would come later. Dressed in black, Dorrance with a blazer, they performed an intricate set of moves  interacting, touching and leaning, as well as fending off. Immediately, there was the sense of a different direction for Dorrance.

With flashes of lighting by Kathy Kaufmann there was fleeting awareness of three other, identically attired pairs. There was some legerdemain as now we see them and then we don’t. In this manner the dance expanded from a couple to gradually include the company. On a bare stage without props her lighting brilliantly and succinctly defined the space.

The tight squares of light expanded to circles of varying circumference. A trope entailed an individual solo, often demonstrating a particular style, while around the edge were observers or an audience. Watching a particularly plastic performer spinning on his head reminded me of street dancers in front of the Met or below ground in transit stations. It was intriguing to see this transfer from street to stage, from vernacular to fine art.

Which really is the premise of the company. Dorrance Dance is equivalent to an American Bolshoi Ballet.

The dance morphed fluidly to feature the entire company as well as individual soloists. At one point they formed a line with eccentric moves by individuals. The line split in parallel then ultimately dissolved. The challenge for the co-creators was to present the power and integrity of the whole as well as releasing cameos of uniquely individual dancers.

For the finale they returned to the metaphor of the beginning. Instead of one there were now 12 squares of light, eleven for the dancers, as well as one for the percussionist. He “danced’ with his upper body and clapping.

This innovative and spectacular work inevitably makes one ask what’s next for the company? Now at mid career is this a signifier of Dorrance’s mature work or a one off? Arguably, there is more where this came from.