Music From The Sole
Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap’s Afro-diasporic roots, particularly its connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music, and it lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk). Led by Brazilian dance/choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and by bassist/composer Gregory Richardson, their work embraces a blend of sound and movement, with a mission of bringing tap dance, America’s vernacular dance form, to new audiences. Since their first performances in 2014, Music From The Sole has appeared at the Lincoln Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Tap in Rio and the Vail Dance Festival.
Music From The Sole’s I Didn’t Come to Stay blurs the line between concert dance and musical performance, celebrating tap’s roots in the African diaspora with a mix of Afro-Brazilian, jazz, soul, house, and Afro-Cuban styles. In this work, Sandoval and Richardson lead eight dancers and a five-piece band in a performance that explores tap’s lineage and connections to other Afro-Diasporic forms. Together, they lead a Carnival fever dream that embraces shared roots across the diaspora to reflect on what shapes their cultural and artistic identity, and celebrates the joy, depth and virtuosity of Black dance and music. “An unforced crowd-pleaser, original and true to itself” (The New York Times).
I Didn’t Come to Stay is a commission from Works & Process at the Guggenheim and was created with the support of a summer 2020 Works & Process bubble residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, as well as residency support in March 2021 from The Yard, an April 2021 Pillow Lab residency at Jacob’s Pillow, a February 2022 Creative residency at Chelsea Factory, and a March 2022 Works & Process LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” residency at Catskill Mountain Foundation. Additional rehearsal support was provided by the American Tap Dance Foundation.
I Didn’t Come to Stay was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This project is funded, in part, through a Seed Fund for Dance grant from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, thanks to the support of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. The piece’s creation was also supported by a 2022 grant from the O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, and a 2022 APAP ArtsForward grant. Music From The Sole is supported by Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by the Howard Gilman Foundation and the Ford Foundation, and by the New York State Council on the Arts.