GO: Tamango's Urban Tap

[When Foot contributors see something that excites us so much, we can't stand the possibility that you might miss it, we'll post a short plug. Apollinaire has done only a few so far. This one is from Eva Yaa Asantewaa and continues on her Web site. DO click!]

You have to see Tamango. You simply have to. The way you have to see Paris. Or Stonehenge. Or the Niagara Falls.

And if you hurry, you can do it right now through March 25 at the Joyce Theater where Tamango's Urban Tap presents "Bay Mo Dilo" (Give Me Water). (For tickets: 212-242-0800.)

Premiered last fall in Miami, "Bay Mo Dilo" (Give Me Water) is a fine multimedia production dedicated to the memory of the French Guianan poet and scholar Léon Gontrand Damas. Renowned dancer-choreographer Tamango, born in French Guiana and reared in France, runs a tight ship. The show comes in at a neat 75-minutes in length and everything locks together and works: percussion, vocals, dancing, lighting and especially "Naj" Jean de Boysson's video backdrop.

De Boysson shares directing credits here with Tamango and rightly so. His exhilarating video, spread over one large central screen and two wings, embraces and grounds Tamango's choreography in the lush, natural context of rain-blessed Latin tropics while spinning it into decidedly headier, hazier realms of sun-dazzled imagination. He's the perfect collaborator for a master tap dancer who mixes exquisite movement skills, intricate rhythms of the Creole diaspora and modern sound technology.

The show begins with a deceptively sleepy pace. In de Boysson's video, the fiery ball of the sun bores a hole through thick cloud cover. Vado Diomande--a masked stilt dancer who hails from the Ivory Coast--seems to take forever to rise from the floor to full height, but when he finally stands tall, he's heaven's own rooster brusquely waking us to full awareness with his piercing cries.

Continue reading Eva's review here. You need to scroll down a bit.