Tap dancers Hannah Ballard and Lexi Bradburn take a sexy and silly look at fairytales for the modern day woman, making as much noise as they can in the process. Aptly choosing tales where shoes are the central focus, Sole Rebel Tap replace dainty ballet slippers from The Red Shoes with clunky tap shoes, and lose one in Cinderella’s walk of shame after a night painting the town red.
The theme of red and blushing strings the vignettes together, making Blushed a charming and witty take on the classics that enables the dancers to weave in their hoofing to a loose plot. Ballard, artistic director and Bradburn, co-director of Sole Rebel Tap, collaborate with renowned clown and theatre director Peta Lilly to create this piece, which humorously showcases good tap dancing. The girl who trod on the loaf and Professor Piscaldo are particular new favourites that see Ballard wearing loaves of bread on her feet and Bradburn wearing diving goggles. Bradburn’s expressive characters and manly voices balance well with Ballard’s butter wouldn’t melt persona and both become fierce performers the moment their feet come into play.
The sophistication of the choreography appears when the scene at hand floods the tap dancing with personality or stylistic adaptations. The clearest example of this is their burning hot shoe shuffle to Too Darn Hot from the musical Kiss Me Kate. Bradburn finds herself in Hell and her accents and weight are adjusted to pique her grounded tapping with the image and feeling that she is dancing on hot coals, burning her feet with each tap as she gets faster and faster, wincing as her taps meet the floor for micro seconds.
References to classic films where jazz tap was heavily influenced by ballroom and social dance appear frequently in an homage to the Hollywood tap dancing greats, alongside more contemporary songs such as Lionel Richie’s Stuck on You, (where Ballard’s shoe gets stuck to the floor). Each track is carefully chosen to bring a giggle to that particular scene.
The Little Mermaid scene was long for one of the sections with the least tap dancing. At one point Ballard’s legs are taped together with red gaffer tape in true mermaid style: would it be possible to achieve the impossible and somehow tap dance in this state? Bradburn popping up from behind the table as a lobster wearing oven gloves is pure comedy and I really wanted to see how she would embody this creature in taps! When Ballard finds her feet and learns to walk as a human again, this wobbling, blundering movement scene could be developed with more tap vocabulary and would put the finishing touches on the work. Another section well worth exploring and extending is where Bradburn talks to the mermaid who has cut her tongue out. She can only answer in taps and Bradburn’s running commentary of how Ballard feels embodied in her dancing, is moving, funny, interesting and over too soon.
Sole Rebel Tap have created a tap dancing show that has a charm and character in its quirky jokes and stories performed by two sassy women. The last routine, set to The Beat Goes On, is where the most complex tap takes off as their red shoes paddle, cross-phrase and scrape the floor with the outside edge. The style is rooted in jazz tap, which is in keeping with many of the musical references in he piece, and predominantly making complex rhythms out of the most simple vocabulary; paddles, pick-ups and tap-steps. As the pair break into separate steps, Bradburn layers accented taps over Ballard’s steady beat to create complimentary and satisfying rhythms. This multi-layering, introduced in the opening routine where the pair put a spell on their tap shoes to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell on You, is musically and technically challenging and riveting to watch and hear.