A Dorrance Dance Production, The Center Will Not Hold rings in the opening of the 93rd Festival Season at Jacob’s Pillow, America’s longest-running dance festival and National Historic Landmark. What began in 2022 as a four and a half minute duet between Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance is now a resounding celebration of American and Black vernacular dance styles.
The work is inherently communal, in both its creation and performance. The ensemble of 11 performers slip between tap dance, hip hop, breaking, house, Chicago footwork, Detroit jit, Litefeet, Memphis jookin’, and body percussion — simultaneously blending and highlighting these distinct styles. More than 14 choreographers are included in the program, alongside artistic advisors and elders Brenda Bufalino and Buddha Stretch.
Set to original music by Donovan Dorrance, Michelle’s brother, the score is overlaid with live percussion by John Angeles and the rhythmic impetus of tap, body percussion, and the occasional sneaker squeak.
The Center Will Not Hold starts as it began, as a duet between Asherie and Dorrance. Dressed in black streetwear and blazers, the two stand at the front of the stage in a spotlight. Their duet is gestural and intimate, and as its intensity grows, other spotlights highlight additional duets throughout the stage.
These duets become a throughline throughout the hour-long work. Ranging from playful and conversational to competitive and aggressive, the performers call upon the tradition of the cypher in hip hop and street styles, finding moments where they face each other and share their movement back and forth.
Drummer John Angeles is a standout, moving between a miked table where he creates rhythm with his fingers, hands, elbows, and forearms to a drum and cymbal set he wears as he moves about the stage. In the back is a full drum set where he also accompanies the dancers.
The work unfolds with a series of solos and full group movement, drawing on improvisation and freestyle to showcase the individual talents of the performers. While Michelle Dorrance is known for combining music, tap, and body percussion with ingenuity, this performance takes a different collective of dancers/artists amplified through Dorrance and Ephrat Asherie in a distinct direction and cannot be reduced to a single genre or style of dance.
In particular, the lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann is artful. With so much movement on the stage, her careful and meticulous work guides the eye of the audience. Dancers move in and out of spotlights, and Asherie has a solo in a strobe that feels otherworldly.
The title of the work comes from the opening lines of William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” which reads “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Written at the end of World War I, the precipice of the Irish War of Independence, and in the aftermath of the Spanish flu, the poem captures a sense of chaos and anarchy that echoes in present times.
As the work opens, the title seems to resonate with a sense of instability. The opening duets are fraught and tense, the dancers’ faces stern. The isolation, created by the spotlights and differing movement styles, is palpable. As the duets and solos merge into a unison marked by the performers’ individuality, the movement develops into a lively celebration — defiant and even joyous. The whole work feels liberatory in its quest for solidarity and resilience.
The Center Will Not Hold ends with all performers on stage in lit boxes. They arrive together via their own styles, and a unison of body percussion emerges in canon, led by Dorrance and Angeles. When they stomp together and the lights go out, the audience is already on its feet.
