Vocalist Aster Rhys, Maria Clara Laet, Christie Echols, Alexis Robbins, Megan Gessner. Jayla Anderson Photos.
“All art can happen on a sprung wood floor!” the audience chanted back in response to the initiator and speaker of the hour, Alexis Robbins. She sat on the vinyl stage, stretching and holding her water bottle as she spoke. In 30 minutes, she would be Alexis, choreographer and performer. For now she was Alexis, advocate for tap representation and artistic director of The Mercy Velvet Project (MVP).
This was the scene last week in Music Back Then Performance Center’s main ballroom in West Haven, as community members gathered to view an informal work-in-progress showing of the Mercy Velvet Project. It came after a six-day creative residency sponsored by ArtsWest CT, which has become a powerful arts incubator and advocacy engine for the arts in West Haven.
“Tap is often used in ways suggesting that it is simple, that it is adorable, that it is less than,” Robbins said. Her work, from jazz jams to rock operas, is meant to push back against that stereotype, showing in real time how rigorous the form actually is.
Robbins grew up listening to the sounds of Mercy Velvet, a small group that disbanded in the early 2000s, as her father was the drummer of the band. In 1999, the group recorded an album titled Live In Vain, which became a sort of unexpected soundtrack to Robbins’ adolescence. Two decades later—and after the album was digitized—she revisited it, interested in tap dance as a percussive instrument and performance tool.
The resulting Mercy Velvet Project is a multidisciplinary rock opera that challenges its dancers, vocalists and musicians (read more about that here and here). In a world where tap dance is often undervalued, underrepresented, and scarcely curated, Robbins can attest to the fact that the form is very much alive.
During her pre-show talk, Robbins ran through the history of tap to current-day struggles as a tap artist in New Haven. Tap is a Black American art form that can be traced back to the involuntary trafficking of Africans to America, she explained. Separated from their drums, West African rhythms were learned to be expressed through the feet.
Stereotypes and misrepresentations of tap began almost as quickly as tap formed, finding a place for caricature in the 1830s during minstrel shows and judgment within the dance community later on.
“Every single day, I hear at minimum once tap used as the butt of a joke,” Robbins said. “That is a direct result of minstrelsy to now.”
During the talk, Robbins highlighted the judgment that tap has received through the years within the dance community, quoting from Ted Shawn’s The Fundamentals of Dance Education that tap has no place in dance education. The scarcity of sprung wood floors in most dance spaces reflects the historical ostracization of tap, she said. The Mercy Velvet Project found a place for tap in the midst of this, rewriting the drumlines to parts, making tap dance the main form of percussion in the entire show.
Following the talk with Robbins, audience members were introduced to the rest of the day's ensemble and the work they’ve put together. The cast performed four songs from the nine-song album, taking their time to introduce the songs in sets of two and providing context to their creative process.
The first song, entitled “How Do You Feel?” began with music director Christie Echols front and center, mic'd up with bass in hand. As musical director and vocalist, Echols has been working with Robbins since the beginning, bringing this vision to life. Echols served as a guide throughout the entire performance, wandering throughout the space, singing original Mercy Velvet lyrics, and improvising at times.
“You are not alone,” Echols sang. “Got to find a way out to fit into this place.”
Slowly, other performers made their way into the space, vocalist Aster Rhys joining Echols in vocals downstage. Robbins, Megan Gessner, and Maria Clara Laet entered individually, tapping their lines of the music.
It was immediately clear that the show, in its current form, is both deeply individual and deeply collaborative. Members of the ensemble complement each other well, while each being allowed to be their own performer. Earlier in the week, that had been true of the group's approach to the residency itself: dancers were given space to review tap parts on their own and reconvene when needed.
Dancers allowed their arms to speak in contrast to their feet, occasionally falling into an organic formation that gave way to powerful moments of tapping in unison. Equally powerful were the moments when dancers abruptly stopped and looked to the musicians in the space, giving way to stillness.
By the end of the second song entitled “Life Is So Strange,” the dancers also mic'd up, Laet taking on three roles—tapper, vocalist, and musician—at the same time when she pulled out a drumstick and cymbal. Gessner took on a different role, soloing contemporary movement throughout the entire song, and taking on a duet as a solo for the performance. As she commanded the space, the rest of the ensemble created a sort of rock-infused soundbath at stage left.
The third song performed, “Story Of An Hour,” was the most theatrical of the set, featuring more interactive dancing and acting than before, and allowing the music to drive the story. Conversely, the fourth and final song, “Changing Times,” was greatly tap-driven, and by the end, the only sounds were those of the taps.
The piece began with Robbins sliding across the edges of the floor before being joined by Gessner and Laet, each tapping their line of the music. Eventually, the music fell away, leaving only the dancers and their sounds. They joined together into a line across the back of the flooring, falling into a canon, where one dancer begins a movement phrase and after a set period, another dancer joins at the top of the choreography.
This created a time delay, serving as a way for dancers to be an ensemble while having an individual moment to shine.
Dancers eventually fell into an extended unison, and the audience watched in awe as they skillfully tapped on the challenging and slippery vinyl flooring with precision. One by one, dancers made their exit until Laet was left on her own, repeating the phrase and finishing with one final stamp and strict gaze at the audience.
After the performance, the ensemble stayed to answer questions from the audience. Last week's work-in-progress showing was a stop along the MVP’s goal of premiering the full-length show in 2026. Though the project began as a personal passion for Robbins, the ensemble continues to grow and share the same goal for the show.
“There is beauty in the personal nature of this project and the beauty of choreography, that person now lives in you,” Gessner said.