Dorrance Dance – ETM: Double Down, Sadler's Wells, London, review: electronic tap boards amplify the sounds of dancers' feet

New Yorker Michelle Dorrance brings ETM – electronic tap music – to Sadler's Wells for the first time

Dorrance Dance perform as a 'human keyboard' (Hayim Heron)

There's a delight in sound in ETM: Double Down, by New York tap dance company Dorrance Dance. Working with Nicholas Van Young, Michelle Dorrance uses electronic tap boards that amplify and play with the sounds of the dancers' feet, from swipes and scrapes to a scene that turns a line of dancers into a keyboard.

Dorrance studied with tap heroes, including the Nicholas Brothers and Peg Leg Bates, and with modern masters such as Savion Glover. There's a playful sense of collaboration among her company of eight, and with their musicians. At first, there's a little too much setup in introducing the tap boards, showing how steps can set off echoes and patterns, but the show builds from its quiet opening, getting more exuberant as it goes.

By the end of the first half, a line of dancers are stamping out patterns, dropping lengths of chain to add a satisfying rattle to the sound. Dorrance herself is a lean, long-limbed dancer who folds into angles or gets down into the floor. She's particularly good with swiping, scraping moves, arcs of motion that come with their own distinctive sound.

Her seven dancers work as an ensemble and as soloists in their own right. Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie is primarily a hip-hop dancer, wearing trainers as often as tap shoes, with fast, springy footwork that underlines links between these two African-American styles.

A solo for singer Aaron Marcellus is full of sweet-voiced rhythms, building patterns of sound. Dorrance and her company play with sound, but they're careful to take the audience along with them. There's a lovely sense of engagement between her dancers. A duet for Byron Tittle and Gabe Winns Ortiz feels like a conversation in tap, the mood shifting from tenderness to argument and back. This isn't a competition dance, but something more vulnerable. At one point, Ortiz pours out lines of taps as Tittle walks away. The solo is transformed when Tittle turns back to him, as if the meaning of the sound changes with who is hearing it.

The use of tap boards goes from rhythm to melody. In one sequence, the boards are set to chime like glockenspiels under the dancers' feet. In another, Dorrance lines up seven dancers so that they become both a bobbing chorus line and a dancing keyboard. One trio play with a repeated phrase, bodies crossing and overlapping as they keep it going; another spins out the top notes into a solo, floating away from the others.

Dorrance Dance is at Sadler's Wells till 15 July, sadlerswells.com