Irish Step Dance Meets Tap and Ballet at Vail Dance Festival

On August 10, the Vail Dance Festival in Vail, Colorado, will present a world premiere that blends Irish step dance, tap, and ballet. The work is choreographed by tap dancer Michelle Dorrance, a 10-year festival veteran, and Chelsea Hoy, co-artistic director of Chicago's Trinity Irish Dance Company, in her first collaboration with the festival. The cast includes New York City Ballet principals India Bradley, Tiler Peck, and Roman Mejia, alongside tap dancers Emiko Nakagawa and Dario Natarelli, and Trinity dancers Hoy, Maddie Cabral, Michael Fleck, Anna Gorman, and Sofia Dorantes. Dorantes, in her first season with Trinity, is currently Mexico's winningest female Irish step dancer. The piece is part of the festival's NOW evening of world premieres. Dorrance and Hoy aim to find common ground between the forms, with Irish soft shoe sharing lineage with ballet and hard-shoe dance aligning with tap. Trinity last performed at Vail in 1999, and last summer's appearance at Jacob's Pillow marked the first full evening of Irish dance in the Ted Shawn Theatre. Hoy notes that Irish dance has been marginalized from ballet and contemporary worlds, but this collaboration shows that Irish dancers can exist on the same stage. The project builds on prior collaborations between Dorrance and Trinity, including 2020's American Traffic and SÉseacht earlier this year.