“Every Little Step … the Rhythm of Hope,” which just finished a run at the Joyce SoHo, is a collaboration between Dance Theater of Ireland and Soul Steps, a New York company specializing in the African-American body percussion known as stepping. It is far from the first time that Irish and African-American dance have crossed paths. The braiding of those traditions over a few centuries is what gave the world American tap dance.
The dancing in this production is not tap, but the two sides bring to this new marriage of traditions what they brought to the old. Stepping plays the low bass of stamping feet against the higher pitches of hands slapping chests, bellies, thighs and hands, sometimes hands that meet underneath a raised leg. It excels in cross-rhythms, syncopation. Irish dance articulates the different parts of the foot and plays them against one another. It shines in floor-skimming speed, percussive embroidery.
“Every Little Step” brings together three women from Soul Steps with three men and one woman from Dance Theater of Ireland in various groupings. Sometimes they face off in teams; sometimes they hold hands across the Atlantic. The Irish dancers do a lot of stepping, but the minimal Irish dancing that the soul steppers do is mostly in jest. At one point both groups step to traditional Irish music, which works just fine, and the advanced Irish technique of Andrew Vickers strikes sparks during his call and response.
The Irish contingent additionally contributes some modern dance. This seems more of a third wheel, though the lanky contemporary dancer Marc Stevenson is the most unusual mover onstage. (Born in Guadeloupe and trained in France, he also has the least recognizable background.) His solo of despair, a kind of slowed-down break dancing, is the most intriguing moment in the hourlong presentation. But like most of the show’s sections, especially the solos, it’s too truncated.
“Every Little Step” favors smooth segues and teamwork. The choreography — a joint creation of the Irish troupe’s Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick and Soul Steps’ Maxine Lyle — supplies just enough visual interest in rearranging formations. Although the cast’s mutual encouragement of one another often sounds more pro forma than spontaneous, when the mixed company is stepping together or contributing to the rhythm in pairs, the aural image of unity is persuasive and rousing.
Regrettably, the production is not all dance. There’s also spoken word, weak humor, self-help advice and earnest, rhymed doggerel about hope. No relevant verbal cliché goes unspoken (“one step at a time,” “finding my feet again,” “the beat goes on”). Some of the words draw a parallel between two cultures, colonized and enslaved, that communicated in rhythms when their spoken languages were suppressed. Would that “Every Little Step” had trusted more in the eloquence of those rhythms to speak for themselves.
