Name: Virginia Arts Festival - Ferguson Center for the Arts
Start: 2026-04-23T19:30:00
Location: Christopher Newport University

Dorrance Dance

Join award-winning tap dance company Dorrance Dance for a brand new program that showcases the musicality and versatility of its “close-knit family” (Wall Street Journal) of dancer-musicians, featuring the DD choreographic debut of longtime company members Elizabeth Burke and Luke Hickey. A Swing Suite (2023) is tremendously inspired by the music that Burke and Hickey’s mentor, Gene Medler, exposed them to as kids, and how it shaped their taste and interest throughout their entire artistic lives. The work is an homage to Gene, and an offering around the idea that just about every road leads back to home. Paired with Michelle Dorrance’s critically acclaimed SOUNDspace | REDUX (2013), an originally site-specific work that explored the unique acoustics of New York City’s St. Mark’s Church through the myriad sounds and textures of the feet, which has been adapted and continues to explore what is most beautiful and exceptional about tap dancing – movement as music. By supporting the development and touring of new works alongside company classics, Dorrance Dance continues “blasting our notions of tap dance” with every performance.

Virginia Arts Festival

Attucks Theatre

Virginia Arts Festival - Ferguson Center for the Arts

Christopher Newport University

The Center Will Not Hold is an innovative Dorrance Dance Production and collaboration by Bessie Award-winning choreographer and breakdancer Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie and MacArthur “Genius” Grant awardee Michelle Dorrance, “one of the most imaginative tap choreographers working today” (New Yorker). In its Center for the Arts debut, the evening-length work features 11 performers and original music composed by Donovan Dorrance with live percussion by world-class drummer and percussionist John Angeles. The piece is deeply rooted in one or many street, club, and vernacular dances: house, breaking, hip hop, tap dance, Chicago footwork, Detroit jit, litefeet, Memphis jookin, and body percussion.