DANCE REVIEW : Jazz Tap in Westwood

The Jazz Tap Ensemble offers an utterly contemporary program on the club-like stage at the Westwood Playhouse.

At Thursday’s opening, three new works graced an evening of old favorites.

In “Tribute,” the dancers re-create the style and steps of film stars, capturing the mood and allowing rare close-up glimpses of the demanding choreography. A startling novelty is the group’s valentine to the Condos Brothers: Mark Mendonca and Sam Weber, bare-chested and in feather headdresses, offering an “Indian Dance.”

Weber, known for balletic lightness, here demonstrates that he can also handle the lower registers of tap-dancing. He and Mendonca pace the opening number, a new and presumably improvised set of riffs to Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way.” The music, favorite jazz standards executed affectionately by Stacy Rowles on trumpet and growly vocals, Jerry Kalaf on drums, Jeff Colella on piano and David Enos on bass, provides familiar ground on which the dancers build new tap edifices.

Tap master Eddie Brown, a guest of the ensemble who has been in this business since the ‘30s, was his usual spry and charming self, but the inventive energy of the evening was all in the work of Weber, Mendonca and artistic director Lynn Dally, a good sign in a genre often top-heavy with nostalgia. “Rap Tune,” created by Kalaf and Weber, is a remarkable rap-without-words that captures exactly the infectious cadence of the burgeoning genre.

Dally looks better than ever; her posture has improved, and her obvious pleasure in her work contagious. No bimbos and chorus boys here, only mature artists--even 21-year-old Mendonca, dark and brooding, who dances with suppressed power. If he can talk, he’s got a future in the movies.