UP AND COMING

Dance troupe envisions tapping in to a fun genre

Matt Boyce and Anthony Hinrichs practice a Gregory and Maurice Hines number ahead of a performance in June at the Ron Robinson Theater.
Matt Boyce and Anthony Hinrichs practice a Gregory and Maurice Hines number ahead of a performance in June at the Ron Robinson Theater.

Car dealers think a lot about saturation. Open a Ferrari dealership in Little Rock and people pump their fists. "We're finally Dallas!" Open two more and your salesmen start day trading from their desks.

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Courtesy of United Cerebral Palsy

United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas’ Putt Putt Pub Crawl will feature nine homemade holes designed and built by each of the nine participating River Market District bars. (This example is from a similar event in Decatur, Ill.)

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Courtesy of United Cerebral Palsy

Since the 1990s, the Land of Lincoln United Cerebral Palsy in Decatur, Ill., has put on a Putt Putt Pub Crawl fundraiser with holes such as this one. On March 5, United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas will try its hand at the same fundraiser in bars downtown.

People think there's a saturation point with arts organizations, too, but there's a maxim in advertising that the solution to saturation isn't fewer players but bigger playgrounds. Expand the market. When it comes to the arts and fundraising, I agree. There's room.

That's why on Feb. 19 at Ron Robinson Theater you'll see me at the second annual fundraiser for Untapped, "Arkansas' first ever professional tap dance company." (I have no idea how this can be checked, but it's on Untapped's GuideStar page. If anyone has evidence of an earlier professional tap dance company, write.)

Tickets are $50. The evening will consist of cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, and entertainment, including performances by the company and its youth ensemble.

Untapped is Matt Boyce's labor of love. The 28-year-old New Jersey native began the process of filing for 501(c)3 nonprofit tax status not long after moving here in 2012 for a teaching opportunity. He still travels for work but teaches dance at Rock City Dance Center.

The company's crowdfunding campaign last fall on JustGive.org raised $4,000, Boyce says.

"People used to go to the movies ... to see the tap dancers on film," he says. "You see The Little Mermaid" at Arkansas Repertory Theatre? "There's a very short tap session in there, and of every piece that happens in the entire show, people went the craziest for that one, and it's just a simple little segment."

Boyce's company begs comparison to ballet in town. Ballet is the only genre of dance that can boast two prominent stand-alone companies in Little Rock -- the professional one, Ballet Arkansas, and the amateur one, Arkansas Festival Ballet. A philanthropist in the city once told me she didn't think this market could support two ballet companies, but it seems to be doing just that.

Far from aspiring to ballet's success, Boyce is inclined to think he should outperform it by a far cry.

"There's dancers who love and respect ballet but would never go to a professional show. It's good for technique. It's real pretty, but they would never go to a real performance. I don't think tap is something that people are like, 'Well, yeah, I like it, but I'm not going to do anything about it.'"

It's loud and exciting and rhythmic, he says. "We create songs on top of songs," he says. "It's kind of like an adrenaline boost."

There are nine dancers in the company. About half make their living teaching dance. The other half have careers -- speech pathology and the Air Force, to name two. By a professional tap dance company, Boyce means "not like a survival income, per se, because we're not at that level yet," but paid to perform, yes.

In June the company did its first full production, Legends of Rhythm. It featured an eight-piece band and a video element introducing the audience to some tap dance trailblazers like the late, great Vera-Ellen, Howard "Sandman" Sims and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. The company's planning another June solo show "very similar to that," but bigger -- likely not at Ron Robinson Theater because "we can't do the production value and size there."

Tickets to the fundraiser Feb. 19 must be bought online prior to the event at UntappedLittleRock.org.

PUTT, PUTT, DON'T DRIVE

Remember when I wrote about radio station KUAR's Pub Quiz night?

No, I don't read your column.

Well, in it I said more and more nonprofits should organize these fun, kind of date-night fundraisers.

You use big words. You're sarcastic. It's all wrong for the section.

OK, but moving on. United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas is going to take over the Little Rock River Market District on March 5 for a Putt Putt Pub Crawl. This is so perfect. It combines several things I love. One is the River Market. Another is drink specials. Still another, foursomes.

See, sarcasm.

The contest -- for it is a contest, with a trophy but no purse -- is nine holes of putt-putt. Teams of four must ante up $100. Each hole's score is the sum of all four members' strokes, and each of nine participating River Market bars will have planned a putt-putt hole of their design. The event begins at noon at Willy D's piano bar, whose owner has gotten really into planning a good putt-putt hole, charity spokesman Kristen Stuart says.

"There'll probably be some really elaborate ones, and some not so much. It'll be really fun to see what they come up with it."

Stuart says the charity's chapter in Decatur, Ill., has put one on for about two decades, and that 50 teams turned out for the first one. Wow.

There's more information on the website UCPArk.org. Contact Stuart at (501) 747-0005 or kristin@ucpcark.org.

Holes in my argument?

bampezzan@arkansasonline.com

High Profile on 02/07/2016

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