Hoof 'n' woof

The gritty rhythms of Tap Dogs

by Johnette Rodriguez

Although cultural cross-pollination over oceans and continents is well-known in this satellite age, it's still serendipitous when an overlooked art form is discovered, re-formed and re-appreciated all over again. We're talking tap dance, folks. Post-Stomp, post-Noise and Funk, even post-Riverdance -- here come the Tap Dogs.

Originated by Aussie Dein Perry and his brother Sheldon and some of their tap-dancing mates in Sydney, Tap Dogs combines the Perrys' love of tap with Dein's experience as an industrial mechanic in Newcastle. The show premiered at the Sydney Theatre Festival in January, 1995, and later that year at the Edinburgh Festival. It played to standing room crowds in London's West End and won a second Olivier Award for choreography for Dein Perry in 1996 (his first was for a London musical, Hot Shoe Shuffle, in 1995).

There are now three Tap Dogs casts touring the globe, and 28-year-old Sheldon Perry is minding the store with the American crew as well as fronting the show, which has a bit of a plot line about "eight guys on a job." Tap Dogs opens with just a small red box in the middle of the stage, but then ladders get pulled up and many surfaces, both wood and metal, become available for the rhythmic riffs that follow, and even angle grinders are played in a syncopated sequence.

"We assemble the whole thing as we go along, building a whole scaffolding, kind of like a grandstand," explained Sheldon Perry, on the phone from a gig in Cleveland. "I play the foreman, and you've got your kid and your enforcer. We're pretty much dancing all the time, with chances for everyone to get their solo."

Sheldon and Dein started tapping when they were five and four years old, respectively, taking lessons in the very blue-collar steel town of Newcastle from Les Griffith, who tapped in the traditional African-American hoofer style made popular by Sammy Davis, Jr. Their mother had always wanted to tap dance, but her mother didn't want her to, so she passed her love of it along to her sons.

"Our teacher was exceptional and so strict," Perry remembered. "There was a ballet school across the street, but we were told that ballet would tighten our ankles up and we needed to stay very loose and not as postured as in ballet. He told my mother, `If that boy goes across the street, he's not getting back in here.' "

Sheldon took lessons until he was 16, beyond the age of making a decision not to practice or dance. He also played a lot of sports. Dein was seven years older; he earned his union papers when he was 17 and spent six years as a machine operator before making the break into show business.

"The hard thing was that we had learned all this fantastic stuff and we had nowhere to take it," recalled Perry. "Then along came 42nd Street and Dein left for Sydney. I was driving trucks for my dad and he called me up and said, `If you want to get out of Newcastle, this is your big chance!' "

Their teacher, Les Griffith, died four nights before they both opened in 42nd Street. But his legacy remained. Inspired by Gregory Hines's improvisations in the film Tap, the Perrys choreographed some dances with electric bass -- "tapping like musicians play bongo drums." Then they applied to the Australian Arts Council and got a $30,000 grant to develop a piece that eventually became Tap Dogs.

"We did it in our jeans and work gear and we thought that work boots would go with that rather than Fred Astaire tap shoes," related Perry. "We did lots without any music, just making the rhythms with our feet. We also play trigger pads hooked up to a [drum machine], so that we sound like a six-piece drum kit. And, at one point, we take the boots off and put on Wellingtons and tap through a tray of water."

During his three years with the show, Perry feels that it has "taken on more light and shade -- not so much impressing with our dance steps as holding back for the strong parts." It has become much more structured, as they have strived to make it more of a song, rather than just tapping flat-out.

"A lot of what we do has a heavy backbeat," he stressed, "so we can't just be tapping over each other. We have to play the hard accents at the right time. We have to be solid and disciplined to our counts, especially when we do the canon stuff -- starting up one end of the stage and coming back down."

Perry wants to do more choreography of his own, but he's content right now to perform "Dein's show." He feels that he's always improving -- both his steps and his stage ethics. "It would be easy for everyone to go off and do their own thing. But it will only work if the rest is a real camaraderie, if we are listening to each other's feet. That's where a lot of the woof comes from, dancing in time with each other."

Tap Dogs is at the Providence Performing Arts Center March 31 through April 5.