Eat This, Michael Flatley: 'Stomp' Rolls In

"What does the word 'stomp' make you think of?" asks Stomp's official web site. "Music, dance, theatre, choreography or performance art? All of the above! Or is it none of the above?

Fitting itself into a single tidy category is one of the very few things that Stomp seems to have been unable to accomplish. The loud, gritty, percusion-oriented show has been touring the world for the past seven years, breaking box-office records and snapping up awards like flies--an Olivier in London, an Obie and a Drama Desk in New York. Now one of the show's two U.S. touring casts is back in Boston, gearing up for what looks like yet another sell-out run.

So what in the world is all the hub-bub about? Well, Stomp has a double-edged appeal: The exuberance and power of its on-stage performance lends it the appeal of a particularly brilliant rock concert, while its genuinely creative philosophy makes it unique among the "performance art" offerings of the stage.

Stomp's conception is this: The world around us is filled with rhythm--rhythm that can be drawn out of anything; household objects, industrial junk, the lowbrow things you find in your pockets, the natural world itself. That means that the world is filled with music. "You can make music out of absolutely anything, whether it's...tapping on a Coke can or picking up pebbles on the beach," says the show's co-creator Steve McNicholas. "It's what you want to do with it."

Stomp seems to be serious about its philosophy. In performance, it really does make startling, beautiful use of the unexpected. The opening act sets the tone for the rest of the show: A young man, wearing a scruffy work shirt and jeans splattered with paint, enters from the wings, pushing a large broom before him across the dusty floor. Evidently intrigued by the noises made by the rhythmic swish of the broom's bristles against the floor, he begins to experiment with its tempo and pressure, resulting in swishes and taps of varying pitch and loudness.

Then another sweeper enters from the wings, and another. Greeting each other only with nods and grunts of "Oi!", their broom-strokes begin to beat out variations on a theme, interweaving and refracting each other. As the rhythm builds, the sweepers become carried away and start to dance to the beat.

By the time all eight sweepers have taken the stage, what's going on up there is an astonishing, sublime percusion performance, combined with intricate eight-part dance--but the percussion is the dance, and the movement creates the noise. And all of it is generated by nothing more than eight sweaty young performers in blue jeans, eight industrial-size brooms and one very dusty stage floor.

The hour-and-a-half of Stomp consists of a seamlessly interwoven series of such acts. All have their basic conception in common--the creation of dynamic sound and movement from strong bodies and everyday objects--but there's surprising variety among those numbers. One long-haired, bandanna-wearing cast member performs a high-powered solo number for two feet and two brooms; four ornery performers challenge each other to outdo one another in playing matchbooks like maracas. We get solo tap-dancing in heavy work boots, a symphony with drugstore-issue plastic bags and an impressive spotlight number in which a single dancer drums up a storm--using only his hands and his own body as instruments.

Comedy bits are interpolated, too; role-playing shows up most strongly in the uproariously funny newspaper scene, in which the cast member who's evidently been selected to play the "doofus" role during the show pantomimes sitting down on a wooden packing crate, surrounded by the other members of the company, to read his newspaper--and finds himself hopelessly distracted by the symphony of newspaper-rustling, throat-clearing and coughing that gradually builds up around him.

Stomp also has the ability to push the viewer into a kind of synaesthesic high--there's a remarkable thrill that comes from watching something that's more than just a combination of dance with musical production. Instead, the movement becomes the music, and the rare thrill that that generates is something which much be demonstrated to be understood.

For example, in one of the least flashy but most striking numbers of the show, tuned lengths of rubber tubing appear in the performers' hands. To throw pitch into the mix, each time a dancer lands from one of his prodigious leaps, the ungainly lengths of rubber tubing strikes a haunting note against the stage floor--the dance as a whole creates a melody. The effect is startlingly beautiful--it's a little watching Tom Hanks dancing on the giant floor piano in Big, except infinitely less chessy and more thrilling.

The set itself--a grungy, industrial conglomeration of trash bins, street signs, scaffolding and stoplights--itself becomes a part of the show. At the halfway point, the cast drums a loud, brilliant, exuberant number against these street artifacts while literally suspended from the scaffolding. And in the show's final, climactic piece, everything from the man-size plastic dustbins on the ground level to the tin trash cans suspended overhead becomes a part of the show, as trash-can lids, hubcaps and more exotic instruments are marched in from offstage.

All its creativity, technical perfection and cumulative power aside, what really makes Stomp work moment-to-moment is the power and energy of its performers. This is contact dancing--a wrong move can occasionally lead to an impact injury--and it's no-holds-barred drumming as well. The musical implements are wielded by their players with such ferocity that broom heads actually snap off and poles break in half more than once during the performance; without missing a beat, a replacement is immediately tossed in from the wings.

The vibrancy and power of these rhythmic beats create a stirring in the blood which clearly fires up the audience, and Stomp is often described as possessing a "primal" appeal on this level, or in terms of a universal "ritual" of rhythm. Its creators acknowledge that fact, adding that the show is influenced by a variety of different cultural incarnations of rhythm--ranging from Japanese and African drumming traditions to American tap dance--but that the language of rhythm seems to be universal.

At the same time, Stomp is very definitely creating a "ritual" of sorts for the very culture it came out of. As McNicholas says, if people insist on deriving any message from Stomp, it should be "Do it yourself." (Using junk, household and industrial objects, by its very nature, challenges the issue of waste and challenges the notion of culture as being highbrow or detached," he says. "I.e., you don't have to buy a cello or a drum kit to make music.")

For all of the apparent sincerity of Stomp's creators and performers about making trash culture work for the masses, there's a certain cognitive dissonance involved in shelling out a significant amount of cash to an upscale theater like the Wilbur in order to watch dusty young people in work clothes dance on a paintsplashed stage. Like last season's dominant theatrical event, Rent the show provides the slightly eerie aesthetic of the glamorously rebellious youth and zero-budget art--an image which doesn't hold up when the viewer's gaze drifts from the stage to the well-heeled, occasionally slightly puzzled-looking middle-aged audience. A ticket to the show will cost you 30 to 50 dollars--a price tag just too rich for many students, however passionate their love for rhythm might be.

If the ticket price and the philosophical conflicts can be overcome, Stomp is a show unequivocally worth checking out--if you have a love of percussion and a high tolerance for intensity and noise.

Fortunately for those who can't make it to the show, Stomp seems to be proliferating into a cultural phenomenon: you might check out its website at http://www.usinteractive.com/stomp/home.html. The page includes, charmingly enough, a section for teachers and children on teaching about sound and rythm in the classroom, linked from the Museum of Science. Or you might look up Cresswell and McNicholas's sound-track from the Showtime movie Riot, or their composition on Quincy Jones's album Q's Juke Joint, or the upcoming public-television special.

Perhaps more to the point, you might try sitting down with you roommates and a couple of used newspapers or CVS plastic bags and seeing if you can figure out how to jam with them.

If you do find yourself with the opportunity to see the show, you may well take away more than the memory of an earth-shaking 90 minutes; part of its purpose is to inspire the audience to start banging on anything that comes to hand. At the end of the show, after the players have gotten all the audience finally to snap fingers in rhythm, the final dancer to exit the stage breaks into words for the first time, summing up the show's message: "Keep it going," he says. "See how long you can keep it with you. Take it home.

The vibrancy and power of these rhythmic beats create a stirring in the blood which clearly fires up the audience, and Stomp is often described as possessing a "primal" appeal on this level, or in terms of a universal "ritual" of rhythm. Its creators acknowledge that fact, adding that the show is influenced by a variety of different cultural incarnations of rhythm--ranging from Japanese and African drumming traditions to American tap dance--but that the language of rhythm seems to be universal.

At the same time, Stomp is very definitely creating a "ritual" of sorts for the very culture it came out of. As McNicholas says, if people insist on deriving any message from Stomp, it should be "Do it yourself." (Using junk, household and industrial objects, by its very nature, challenges the issue of waste and challenges the notion of culture as being highbrow or detached," he says. "I.e., you don't have to buy a cello or a drum kit to make music.")

For all of the apparent sincerity of Stomp's creators and performers about making trash culture work for the masses, there's a certain cognitive dissonance involved in shelling out a significant amount of cash to an upscale theater like the Wilbur in order to watch dusty young people in work clothes dance on a paintsplashed stage. Like last season's dominant theatrical event, Rent the show provides the slightly eerie aesthetic of the glamorously rebellious youth and zero-budget art--an image which doesn't hold up when the viewer's gaze drifts from the stage to the well-heeled, occasionally slightly puzzled-looking middle-aged audience. A ticket to the show will cost you 30 to 50 dollars--a price tag just too rich for many students, however passionate their love for rhythm might be.

If the ticket price and the philosophical conflicts can be overcome, Stomp is a show unequivocally worth checking out--if you have a love of percussion and a high tolerance for intensity and noise.

Fortunately for those who can't make it to the show, Stomp seems to be proliferating into a cultural phenomenon: you might check out its website at http://www.usinteractive.com/stomp/home.html. The page includes, charmingly enough, a section for teachers and children on teaching about sound and rythm in the classroom, linked from the Museum of Science. Or you might look up Cresswell and McNicholas's sound-track from the Showtime movie Riot, or their composition on Quincy Jones's album Q's Juke Joint, or the upcoming public-television special.

Perhaps more to the point, you might try sitting down with you roommates and a couple of used newspapers or CVS plastic bags and seeing if you can figure out how to jam with them.

If you do find yourself with the opportunity to see the show, you may well take away more than the memory of an earth-shaking 90 minutes; part of its purpose is to inspire the audience to start banging on anything that comes to hand. At the end of the show, after the players have gotten all the audience finally to snap fingers in rhythm, the final dancer to exit the stage breaks into words for the first time, summing up the show's message: "Keep it going," he says. "See how long you can keep it with you. Take it home.