Bowfire, which came to the George S. & Dolores Dore Eccles Center for Performing Arts on March 8, is advertised as Flying Fiddles, Stepping Feet, Glorious Voices. The fiddles were definitely flying, but the stepping feet and glorious voices were few and far between.
While there might not have been many numbers with step dancing in them, the little dancing there was was quite good. The two step dancers were Linsey Beckett and Stephanie Cadman and each danced in two numbers by themselves and two numbers together. Their styles were a bit different; Beckett seemed to be a more traditional step dancer while Cadman had hints of rhythm tap dance in her style.
Cadman stood out a bit more to me than Beckett. She had a nice “call and response” section with the drummer. The drummer would drum out a beat and Cadman responded with the same rhythms on her feet. They would keep trying to one up another, making their rhythms harder and harder. And in true tap dance fashion, Cadman performed some fun steps that I am going to try to “steal”. But arguably the most impressive thing that both dancers did was when they fiddled and danced at the same time. They were traveling about the stage, turning and jumping around, and yet they never missed a single beat.
Overall, both dancers were energetic and caught the audience’s attention. The most unfortunate thing was that many of their sounds were lost because the stage was not equipped well to capture tap sounds. Sitting in the front row it was sometimes hard to hear their sounds. I can’t imagine their sounds traveled well to the back of the theater.
So, if you are looking to go to a dance show, Bowfire is not it. If you are looking to go hear some good, sometimes cheesy, fiddle music with a bit of good dancing thrown in, then look no further.
Carly Anderson is a longtime tap dancer who teaches classes for Janet Gray Studios. She also works at the Marriott Library.
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