ARCOS Presents Michael J. Love: Two Weekends of Tap at The Carver

Two tap programs directed by Michael J. Love over two weekends in Austin, TX

​

Program One - The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part II: DOPE FIT!
Friday, September 20 at 8pm 
Saturday, September 21 at 8pm 
Sunday, September 22 at 4pm

​

Program Two - Michael J. Love and Austin Rhythm Tap Society: The Ladies of Jazz
Friday, September 27 at 8pm 
Saturday, September 28 at 8pm

​

Boyd Vance Theater 
George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural, and Genealogy Center 
1165 Angelina Street, Austin, TX 78702

​

​

ABOUT THE EVENT

ARCOS presents two weekends of performances by interdisciplinary tap dance artist Michael J. Love at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural and Genealogy Center’s Boyd Vance Theater in Austin, TX. Presentations will include Love's directorial and choreographic collaboration with

Kaitlyn B. Jones, The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part II: DOPE FIT!, on September 20–21 at 8pm and September 22 at 4pm, and Michael J. Love and Austin Rhythm Tap Society: The Ladies of Jazz, September 27–28 at 8pm.

 

Program One 
The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part II: DOPE FIT! 
DOPE FIT! is the second part of Love's The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, a triptych of live interdisciplinary rhythm tap dance pieces that revel in Blackness by way of a vibrant mixing, sampling, looping, remixing, and high-affect juxtaposition of sounds, media, and performance. The first in the series, GON' HEAD AND PUT YOUR RECORDS ON!, had its sold-out premiere at the Dougherty Arts Center in 2017 before its presentation at the 2019 Fusebox Festival. DOPE FIT! appeared as a work-in-progress presentation earlier this year at the 2019 Cohen New Works Festival. With DOPE FIT!, Love, Jones, and an ensemble of Black artists, thinkers, and collaborators pair movement, rhythm, music, text, and voice with a distinct millennial hip-hop sensibility to create and live in their own metaphysical Black utopia. The piece, driven by rhythm tap and contemporary dance, reclaims the Black cultural archive and enlivens spirited visions of futurity through a queer and feminist lens. DOPE FIT! is performed entirely to live-mixed and looped tap dance, body percussion, and triggered drum sample compositions.

Program Two 
Michael J. Love and Austin Rhythm Tap Society: The Ladies of Jazz 
The Ladies of Jazz, the second full-length presentation by the Austin Rhythm Tap Society (founded in 2016 by Sydney Gallagher and Michael J. Love), is a homage to the late, great luminaries of jazz such as Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and contemporary favorites such as Diana Krall. Committed to honoring the rich culture and preserving the important legacy of the art form, the ensemble—Carla Chapa, Tracie Knodel, and Susan Knight Leos—presents a dynamic collection of live tap dance pieces featuring classic, historic routines and new works set by a few of the region’s most renowned choreographers. The evening will also include live music and performances by Michael J. Love and renown special guest tap artists Jeremy Arnold (a frequent collaborator of Charles O. Anderson’s dance theatre x and Lecturer and MFA in Dance and Social Justice candidate at The University of Texas at Austin) and Karissa Royster (former Broadway cast member of George C. Wolfe and Savion Glover’s Shuffle Along as well as Savion Glover's STePZ). 

 

​

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist—a dancer, choreographer, educator, and director—who creates and curates auralvisual performances that visceralize parts of the Black experience. His work has been supported and presented by Fusebox Festival and the Cohen New Works Festival. He has also received an Austin Critics Table Award and an ARCOS Dance Artist Development Award. Love was a laboratory cast member of the Savion Glover and George C. Wolfe Broadway musical Shuffle Along, and has danced with Baakari Wilder and Andrew Nemr. Most recently, his performance collaborations with transmedia artist Ariel René Jackson have been screened in Berlin and Philadelphia and presented in Austin and New York. Love is an MFA candidate in Performance as Public Practice at The University of Texas at Austin where his research intermixes performance studies and Black queer studies with a rigorous practice based in Black vernacular dance, music, culture, and identity. Learn more here.

 

Austin Rhythm Tap Society, founded by Sydney Gallagher and Michael J. Love in 2016, is a group of lifelong students of rhythm tap dance who remain committed to an advanced study of the form, an honoring of its rich culture, and the preservation of its important legacy. The members of ARTS maintain a small collection of works and produce evenings that focus on live music and the bringing together of tap artists and aficionados in celebration of the joy of rhythm.

​

ARCOS experiments rigorously to discover adventurous new forms of contemporary performance. ARCOS pursues this mission through two major avenues: by creating innovative multimedia performances accessible and relevant to a diverse range of contemporary audiences, and through interdisciplinary training and development programming for performing artists at various stages in their careers. Its performances challenge dominant ways of thinking, blur the borders between conventionally distinct categories, and reflect the turbulent process of traditions in flux. ARCOS’ educational activities include university residencies, semi-annual interdisciplinary performance intensives, weekly dance technique and informal community-building events, microgrants, and fiscal sponsorship. The company has been honored locally with an Austin Critics Table Award and internationally with a “Spirit of the Fringe” award at Edinburgh Fringe. In Austin, the company has presented work at Austin Dance Festival, Frontera Fest, Revolve, Fusebox Festival, Blanton Museum of Art’s SoundSpace series, and the Museum of Human Achievement. ARCOS has received public and private grants and commissions to create and present work at centers for contemporary art, festivals, and interdisciplinary symposia throughout Texas, the US, and abroad.

Visit arcosdance.com to learn more.