PORT TOWNSEND — This Saturday at the Wheeler Theater, Adrienne Wilson intends to step into her best self — as a tap dancer, an artist and a resilient soul.
She will tap beside Bill Evans, the internationally known performer and teacher who inspired her to live a life in dance. They met when she was a student at the State University of New York at Brockport some 18 years ago.
“Bill coming to teach at Brockport was just monumental,” Wilson recalled.
She has since become a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Alabama’s Auburn University.
In late 2019, Wilson already had a plane ticket and plans to be in Port Townsend for Evans’ 80th birthday in April 2020. Instead, she developed a weird cough.
A visit to her doctor revealed she had a pulmonary embolism. Wilson later lost consciousness, was transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, and remained there five weeks.
“I woke up at the end of February,” with limbs she couldn’t move, she said.
Wilson recovered slowly, then returned home in March as the global pandemic was shutting the nation down.
“It took me a long time to put the pieces together,” Wilson said.
When she spoke to her hematologist of her suspicions, he said, yes, she’d had COVID-19.
Like many across the world, Wilson has had a tough time coming back from the illness. Keeping in contact with her network of friends in the dance community has made all the difference, she said.
“I’ve been to Port Townsend before. I love it, love it, love it,” she said.
“This is a magical place.”
Two weeks ago, she and Courtney World, another modern dancer and one of Evans’ longtime friends, arrived here to work on a project documenting his tap legacy.
Then there’s the concert celebrating Evans’ 81st birthday.
He and Wilson are preparing a suite of classic rhythm tap dances by the great Black American artists who helped create the form: Charles “Honi” Coles, Eddie Brown and James “Buster” Brown. The pieces are titled, respectively, “Class Act,” “E.B. Choruses” and “Laura.”
Saturday’s 7 p.m. performance also spotlights modern dance and performance art by Evans, his husband Don Halquist, Port Townsend dancers Abbie Doll, Anna Hansen, Camille Hildebrandt and Ashley A. Friend, and Falon Baltzell, Evans’ colleague who is artistic director of The Wooden Floor, a nationally known school of dance in Santa Ana, Calif.
Tickets, $20 if purchased by midnight Friday, are on sale via madronamindbody.com, the website of the Madrona MindBody Institute presenting the concert. Remaining seats will be sold for $25 at the door Saturday at the Wheeler Theater, 200 Battery Way at Fort Worden State Park.
Wilson said imagining this visit helped keep her focused on getting well. She thought specifically about downtown’s Vintage Wine Bar and Plaza, with its water view.
“I kept having visions of sitting there with Courtney and Bill and Don, and having a glass of wine,” she said. “That kind of helped keep my sanity.”
“There’s a little pressure there,” in taking the stage with Evans, Wilson admitted. But she’s up for it.
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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
