Review: Revolution

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BY GAIL OGDEN / For the Lincoln Journal Star

An energetic crowd of more than 1,700 welcomed Revolution to the Lied Center for Performing Arts stage on Friday night. Alas, I was not as enthusiastic.

A hybrid of rock ’n’ roll, tap dance, martial arts and Irish step-dancing, Revolution purports to bring these disparate elements together. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t.

The co-creators, Michael Schulster and Joel Hanna, had a lot of different directions they could go. A technology-saturated show, it had lots of distractions in the form of lights, video and music, some of it to good effect.

Sort of like “Riverdance” meets “Stomp,” somewhere in the middle of the second section, I flashed on the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland premise of “let’s get our friends together and put on a show.” In this version, the music is rock ’n’ roll and the dancing is high-energy tap.

When the energy starts so high, it’s difficult to sustain throughout.  And so a lot of it registered as the same for me. The muddy sound and lack of separation between the music and the taps from the floor microphones didn’t help. The rhythms of the dancers’ feet are either an accompaniment to the music or part of the music; it was hard to hear what their intention was.

A couple of moments provided some pleasure for me. The opening of a duet between Schulster and Hanna had echoes of a famous soft shoe danced by Coles and Atkins.  “5, 6, 7, 8 . . . ” had a nice  rhythmic break and some sensitivity not in evidence for much of the show.

Clearly, the men were the main dancers, and the women, for the most part, were set decoration. Overall, the choreography for the women was spectacularly unimaginative, and none of the unison sections was polished.

Also clear is that the dancers are all talented, strong and interchangeable. For me, Hanna had the strongest stage presence, followed closely by Schulster.

And so, I ask these talented young men, “What is it about the music of your friends that makes you want to dance to it, and what could you create that would be new in response?”

Then, perhaps, I would join the rest of the audience in what now seems to be the obligatory standing ovation.