Annenberg Center Live and NextMove Dance present Caleb Teicher & Company

“Variations,” the longest piece of the night, gave us a stunning performance to the famous Glenn Gould piano recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and “Fugue in E Major.” Dressed in black against a black background, Teicher, with dancers Naomi Funaki, Jabu Graybeal, and Charles Renato performed solos, duets, trios, and quartets. Lighting designer Serena Wong’s circles of light expanded or contracted to highlight the dancers on the stage. In general, I am over all the dancing in the dark we’ve seen lately; I’ll make an exception here because the isolation of the dancers in their pools of light and shadow reflected the isolation of the piano in the Bach.

Percussion and fugue

The dance was all about the piano as a percussion instrument, and the dancers pushed the percussive music of their taps to the extreme. In some of the variations, they tapped not just the tempo but every note. In others they danced just the counterpoint or, occasionally, the sustained notes. For one variation, dancer Funaki stood perfectly still in a circle of light, then ran off as the music ended.

My favorite was the final section, set to the “Fugue in E Major.” For much of the piece, the virtuoso dancers focused on speed and power. But the fugue slowed things down a bit and the dancers modulated the sound of their taps, emphasizing their musicality. Although Teicher set Variations to Baroque music performed by a pianist in the 1950s, the dance felt new and fresh, a sly wink at the classics.

Bambi, high heels, and Ella

The program after the intermission took us back to the early 20th century. Teicher’s solo in “Great Heights” would have fit in well in any traveling vaudeville show. It opened to “Love Is a Song,” written by Frank Churchill and Harry Morley for the movie Bambi. Teicher, in a white blouse and dark midi skirt by costume designer Marion Talan, sat on a four-legged industrial stool. When he tried to stand up, we noticed he was wearing women’s high-heeled jazz tap shoes (with T-straps!). He fell, rubber-legged as a newborn fawn. He struggled to regain his feet.

Once he was up, he stripped off the skirt to reveal tight black shorts. The music shifted to “Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days,” by Debbie Morris and Don Donaldson and “Plastic” by Moses Sumney, and he was suddenly on top of the stool, tap dancing in those high heels in a space barely big enough for his feet.

The third piece of the night, “Meet Ella,” choreographed by Teicher and Nathan Bugh, gave us a swing dance performed by Evita Arce and Macy Sullivan in red pants and sleeveless shirts by costume designer Talon, with lighting by Asami Morita. The company is known for its Lindy hop as well as its tap. “Meet Ella,” set to the music of Ella Fitzgerald, gave us energetic Lindy hop, including a few flips. In a tap-dancing section, dancers performed in soft suede shoes that emphasized the movement instead of the sound. The dance ended with a spirited two-step. Teicher usually dances it himself, with co-choreographer Bugh, and this was his first time handing it off to the women in the company. They did him proud.