PORT TOWNSEND — “Liquid feet,” Bill Evans murmurs.
“Everything you do is right,” he says to the dancers as they took a breather on a recent Friday afternoon.
Then they moved again, in the shapes of birds, a river, a waterfall — all with the imagined backdrop of the Olympic Mountains. This is one of seven pieces in “Bill Evans 81!,” a dance party like only Evans could host.
This work is titled “Sun’A’Do,” an indigenous word for the Olympics, which he said continue to take his breath away.
It brings four local dancers together with live music from pianist-composer Linda Dowdell, in costumes created by local designer Judith Bird.
Evans, an internationally known tap and modern dancer, choreographer and teacher who lives in Port Townsend, will celebrate his 81st birthday with a performance at Fort Worden State Park’s Wheeler Theater on Saturday.
Tickets to the 7 p.m. concert, presented by the Madrona MindBody Institute, are $20 in advance at madronamindbody.com; the deadline for advance purchase is midnight Friday. If any seats are left at show time, admission will be $25 at the door.
As a safety precaution, just two-thirds of the Wheeler’s 275 seats will be sold.
While he ran the rehearsal of “Sun’A’Do,” Evans was seated and his bare feet tapped the wooden floor now and then. He has, after all, been tap dancing since he was a young boy in Utah in the 1940s.
His career later brought him to Seattle, and up through 2019, he performed and taught workshops and intensives around the globe.
In April 2020, Evans turned 80. Many months before, plans were made for a concert in the fort’s 900-seat McCurdy Pavilion.
The pandemic postponed that, and the 2021 event is on a smaller scale — yet Evans is delighted to have another chance to perform live again, alongside friends from Port Townsend and beyond.
The evening will range from rhythm tap dance to modern choreography to performance art.
Dowdell, who last performed with the Bill Evans Dance Company at the Wheeler Theater in 1983, will improvise and add effects at her electric piano. Centrum technical director Kelly Doran will serve as lighting designer.
The choreographers, in addition to Evans, include James “Buster” Brown and Don Halquist of Port Townsend.
Halquist, Evans’ partner and husband of 36 years, created a dance to the music of Astor Piazzolla: “Kilter,” with dancer Lauren Ehnebuske.
“Allow the music to come through you,” Halquist said to Ehnebuske during rehearsal on Friday.
“Don’t be in a hurry to turn … wrap … dissolve.”
This piece is about the exquisite connection between the dancer, the melody, and “being in the moment. There’s a lushness to the music,” Halquist said.
Also part of “Bill Evans 81!” are Halquist’s own performance of “Climbing to the Moon,” choreographed by Evans, and “Witnessing Adverbs,” which brings Evans and Halquist together onstage.
Evans’ piece “Portrait of a Lady” features dancer Falon Baltzell of Santa Ana, Calif., while his “Classic Rhythm Tap Suite” pairs Evans himself with Adrienne Wilson, a dancer he met circa 2003 when teaching at the State University of New York at Brockport.
Their tap pieces include “Class Act,” with music by Vernon Duke and choreography by Charles “Honi” Coles and Brenda Bufalino; Eddie Brown’s “E.B. Choruses” and Buster Brown’s piece “Laura.”
The concert will then come back around to “Sun’A’Do,” with four performers who live in and near Port Townsend: Abbie Doll, Ashley A. Friend, Anna Hansen and Camille Hildebrandt.
“Blues for My Father” is the seventh piece. Evans on the dance floor and Dowdell on keyboard create it together, reveling in that connection of body, mind and music.
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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
Bill Evans applauds his fellow dancers in rehearsal. (Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News)
