"Celtic Tap: An Evening With James Devine" is a rhythm lover's dream. The Irish dancer's most flamboyant claim to fame is the ability to tap his feet a mind-blowing 38 beats per second. He's documented by Guinness World Records as the "Fastest Dancer in the World." However, Devine's extraordinary speed would only be shallow virtuosity if he didn't put it to the service of artistic imagination and vision, and that he does, big time.

The sheer rhythmic invention of Devine's industrious feet set him well above the fray (and that includes "Riverdance" phenom Michael Flatley, who he left in the dust long ago.) The new "Celtic Tap," which marked the tapper's Boston debut at the ICA last night, is like a musical travelogue told through rhythm, embracing styles from traditional Irish jigs and reels to jazz, country, funk, and classic hoofing. He even cranks on "Another One Bites the Dust," though that's not his most impressive moment.

What is impressive is the way Devine can meld these disparate stylistic elements with an integrity and fluidity that seems organic, a seamless morphing of rhythms that suggest two worlds at once. In this, Devine is aided by the considerable talents of Scottish percussionist Paul Jennings and violinist/composer Duncan Wickel. They not only provide musical interludes while Devine catches his breath, they become partners in Devine's rhythmic tapestry, laying down a beat, unleashing contrapuntal lines of their own, or trading phrases like an animated conversation. Improvisatory sections unfurl as long digressive trains of thought.

Jennings's remarkable technical facility brings out color and nuance on a range of hand drums, thundering one moment, fluttering like a hummingbird's wings the next. He also plays a mean set of spoons, setting down a sizzling groove and fueling fanciful interplay with Devine, flicking his spoons on the soles of the dancer's shoes.

Wickel, currently studying jazz violin at Berklee, is as persuasive in a traditional Irish ballad as he is country fiddling or ripping through cascading classical flourishes or atonal double stops. At one point, the North Carolina native plucked a bluesy funk number on a violin pitched down into cello range, and you'd swear he was playing guitar. Then just as quickly, he launched into licks from "Flight of the Bumblebee," Devine's taps matching every bow stroke.

There are some slightly contrived, but still entertaining bits - a "Stomp"-like number with a push broom and a soft-shoe in a sand box, with taps complemented by whispered scrapes and slides. But with all the playful shifts and fusing of styles, Devine really lights up with the more traditional Celtic sequences, and you can see why the County Clare native won Irish dancing's highest honor, "The Grand Slam" of top competitive titles all in one year - when he was a tender 14. He has both power and finesse, with dynamics that range from hammering heels to delicate toe taps. Well-oiled ankles and knees enable sideways swivels and high kicks. Yet untraditionally, his loose upper body suggests the freedom of Savion Glover.

One of the show's defining moments is a duet in which Jennings pounds out a funk beat while Devine resolutely sticks to the squarely defined rhythms of Celtic dance. But gradually, their rhythms begin to cross and connect, combining into a new propulsive language. That moment they find common ground is transformative.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

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On a crisp October evening, the Institute of Contemporary Art kicked off its fall dance series with the rousing Celtic Tap. From beginning to end, renowned Irish dancer James Devine inspired his audience with unbelievable tapping abilities and improvisational rhythmic sets with fellow music makers. Devine was flanked by an adorable Scottish percussionist, Paul Jennings, and on violin, 19-year old Berklee phenom, Duncan Wickel. If anything, "Celtic Tap" paid the utmost respect to its musical and cultural roots while looking ahead to the future with from a youthful and fresh perspective.

In case you haven't picked up the Guinness Book of World Records in a while, James Devine is kind of a big deal. Clocking in at 38 taps per second, Devine holds the title of the fastest dancer in the world, and in history. Devine takes the stage alone to begin the night of frenzied rhythms and never lets up thereafter. While you take in his bulging calf muscles as he stomps, slides, and slams his feet across the floor, he is busily extracting music from his surface. There is no hesitation in his approach and no frenzy in his frenetic feats. He is calm and joyful inside the bombastic intricacy of his sounds.

Soon Devine is joined on stage by his young and talented cohorts for a round of introductions via improvisational one-upping. Devine throws out a rhythm which violinist Wickel effortlessly transfers into melody which percussionist Jennings beats out on his combination of cymbals, hand drum, and cajon - a dynamic Peruvian boxed drum.

The show is most engaging when the three share the stage and when the one-upmanship takes a backseat to in-the-moment collaboration. As their sounds blend simultaneously, they tug at every fiber in the viewer's body, beckoning us to jump up and join in.

Some of the more unique moments in "Celtic Tap" include Jennings' solo on the spoons in which he eventually finds himself in a rhythm duel with Devine, battling back and forth tit for tat or spoon for tap, as it were. Devine's synapse-scrambling foot speed combined with equally quick spooning creates a humorous dynamic, with Jennings throwing in embellishments reminiscent of Devine's own dancing flares.

And later, Wickel proves to be the standout performer, exploring his instrument more in-depth than one might have guessed one could with a fiddle. He plays his violin as fiddle, bass, ukelele, and even scratches it like an 80's DJ would vinyl. He is doing exactly what artists do best, stretching the boundaries of his sound through experimentation and play.

It's easy to see why Devine's work has become such a worldwide phenomenon from his native home of Ireland to Australia and beyond. He simply loves what he does, and he's good at it. It will be Devine who will help continue his homeland's for the next generation and show people of all ages the artistry in creating new ones.

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These days, everybody needs a solid marketing hook. And James Devine's is pretty solid: He's the fastest dancer in the world, once pumping out 38 taps in a second for Guinness World Records. Speed isn't the only measure of Devine's brilliance. About 10 years ago, he first saw tap live performed by Savion Glover, no less. Six years ago, the champion Irish step dancer started tapping. By now, he's pretty much invented his own genre, calling it Celtic Tap. That's also the title of his latest production.

Let's clear something up. Celtic Tap isn't Riverdance. And It's not. Devine says in his soft brogue, one of the show's 30 or 40 carbon copies. Nor is it Lord of the Dance, the mega-sequel that shot a teenaged Devine (recruited by Michael Flatley) to the world¹s stages. Sure, there¹s a fiddle and drums, and blinding rhythms that make you all tingly. But the fiddler is a cool-looking Berklee student from Asheville, N.C., while the percussionist has been known to play typewriters and spoons. And you won't see rows of fair lasses grinning through some legend about a magical key.

Instead, you'll see Devine dancing solo. This is probably the only Celtic-inspired touring show in the world to have taken out that line element, says the 31-year-old. In other ways, he breaks with traditional Irish step dance, where the action occurs mostly in unison groups, with dancers nearly on tip-toe, legs crossed at the ankle and arms rigidly down.

If it sounds limiting, well, it is -which explains Devine's post-Savion flash of insight. By going solo, crossing his feet less and digging his heels into the ground, Devine found agility, the freedom to improvise and, yes, speed. Those 38 taps (achieved in a weird lunge, using both feet) broke the previous world record of 35, set by Michael Flatley in 1998, when the Chicago native broke his own record of 28.

For all the American-style individuality, fans of Ireland shan't be disappointed. Devine's mother was a champion step dancer, and his show in steeped in the rhythms and melodies of their homeland. "I'll never totally abandon those roots. It is my identity but my given creative nature, I want to push the definition of Irish, to challenge people's expectations."

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In May 1998 Irish dancer James Devine arrived at a sound stage in Sydney, Australia. After a five-second countdown he started to tap while officials from Guinness World Records aimed three video cameras at his feet. Devine only danced for a few seconds. Afterwards, the video data was fed into a computer that verified that each of his foot-taps had hit the floor and produced a complete sound wave. Devine’s dancing clocked in at 38 taps per second. He was officially declared The Fastest Dancer in the World.

That distinction, Roslyn Sulcas of the New York Times noted, is in artistic terms only marginally more significant than being able to eat 38 hard-boiled eggs in a minute. But gaining the world record as the Fastest Dancer alive was more than a resume builder for James Devine. You see, he had just beaten Michael Flatley, the creator of “Riverdance” and not incidentally, his former boss.

Think Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz and you’ll get an inkling of what it’s like to see a record crumble.

Gauging the speed of a tap dancer’s footwork is something of an underground tradition. Good Irish jig dancers in the mid-1800s could tap a speedy fifteen taps a second. When American clog dancer Johnny Queen performed in England in the 1880s he appeared onstage in his bedroom slippers instead of clogging’s typical hard-soled shoes. Before his show began, he passed his shoes around to members of the audience so they could check he wasn’t cheating by augmenting his sound with “clappers or other Yankee gadgets.” No one would accuse James Devine of such Yankee flimflam.

At age eight, he started dancing in a tiny village in County Clare. His grandmother had been a champion Irish step dancer. So was his mother. By the age of 14, he had won the Grand Slam of Irish traditional dancing, taking the World, American, British, All-Ireland and Great Britain titles in the same year. Flatley hired him for the international tour of “Lord of the Dance” in 1996 and while he expresses his appreciation for Flatley’s high-energy spectacles – shows that single-handedly created a popular new market for Irish dance and music – performing in the show began to frustrate him, not least because the dancers’ thundering footwork was all pre-recorded.

"Ninety-nine per cent of the Irish dance shows are pre-recorded," he complained to Britain’s Sunday Mirror in 2006. "Which to me is, to be quite honest, selling out big time...It's very obvious at moments, like when 34 dancers are dancing in a line and the lead dancer, Michael, is louder than the 34 dancers, which doesn't really add up."

Devine was already thinking of leaving “Lord of the Dance” when he caught Savion Glover and George C. Wolfe’s landmark Bring in Da Noise Bring in Da Funk on Broadway. Under its spell, Devine signed up for rhythm tap lessons and began to delve into the history of Irish dancing.

“Noise/Funk was from a black history perspective, showing the history of African-American dance, true to the sound of the rhythms but not making a statement where the dance came from” Devine explained to me in a recent interview. It provided a theatrical template for Tapeire (2006), Devine’s multimedia exploration of the byways of Irish dance which touched on sean-nos (old style) dancing, the role of itinerant village dancing masters and the Irish Dancing Commission’s attempts to standardize – or, if you agree with Devine, straitjacket – formal dance competitions.

Celtic Tap, is brand new. Less historically minded than Tapeire, Devine describes Celtic Tap as an antidote to “Riverdance” overkill when he says You don’t need a production line with 35 or 40 dancers behind you. I just want to get into the sound, the percussive side of the Irish rhythms and my own experimenting. Accompanied by the playing of Scottish percussionist Paul Jennings and American fiddler Duncan Wickel, Devine’s choreography is an amalgam of traditional sean-nos with its close to the floor, heel-and-toe battering and the hip-hop syncopations pioneered by Glover. Devine is in
the midst of working out his own idiosyncratic rhythmic language, one where tap returns to its roots in both African polyrhythms and syncopation and the lively Irish jig, hornpipe and reel.

Crossing the Atlantic again, James Devine’s tap dancing comes back full circle.

© 2008 Debra Cash

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James Devine has been dubbed the "tap tornado" for good reason. On the boards, his feet are a blur of movement. With his laces flying, he can hammer out 38 beats per second. His feet are so fleet that they have landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records.

His speed gave him an edge as a competitive Irish step dancer, too. At age 14, he won the Grand Slam of Celtic dance, securing the top title in the World, American, British, All-Ireland and Great Britain contests in the same year. He remains the only male to ever achieve that feat.

After several years of riding the Celtic craze, dancing in "Lord of the Dance" and other big shows, he realized that Irish step dancing wasn't his singular calling. Rhythm tap was. "I was meant to learn this," said the 32-year-old Devine. "It was second nature to me. It was like it was in me the whole time. Rhythm tap was fundamental."

Irish step and rhythm tap have since fused in his soles and onstage in his touring solo vehicle "Tapeire." For the past year, he traveled with his high-end, urbane showcase of rhythm and Celtic dance and funk and hip-hop music. James Devine however, the dancer will tone it down with a more intimate, concert-style event in which he continues to meld his dueling dance styles with all musical genres from Celtic to classical.

Devine will be joined by multi-percussionist Paul Jennings and fiddler Duncan Wickel, who will perform such pieces as Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee," the Irish tune "Devil in the Kitchen" and "Dueling Banjos" from the movie "Deliverance." Placed side-by-side, Devine expects the music to bridge ancient cadences with the contemporary world in "a pretty tight jam."

Though he says the show is a percussive conversation between dancer and musicians, the eyes won't be able to divert themselves from Devine. As The New York Times reported, he is commanding, a cross between "Fred Astaire elegance and Savion Glover hunker-down brilliance."Devine is grateful for the comparison. But he knows that the embracing of rhythm tap did wonders for his Irish step technique. "With tap, there is a lot more flexibility," he said. "But people are coming to see the world record holder. I have to entertain them. They have to get what they paid for."

Devine attributes his success in Celtic dance to his mother, his first teacher. She was a step dance champ who was disabled by a brain tumor. She taught him anyway, from her wheelchair. When he was 8, she would tap out the Celtic rhythms on the back of his hand. He would then transfer them to his feet.

After he won the Grand Slam, Michael Flatley approached Devine to star in his "Lord of the Dance." "Irish dance was a phenomenon. It had a new identity. I happened to be right there. I was excited by that. At the time, the opportunities were immense." Those opportunities continued for a good while. In 1998, at the height of the craze, he was invited to Australia, where he choreographed, directed and starred in "GaelForce." He then toured Eastern Europe with another Irish dance spectacle, "Ragus."

His transformation into a rhythm tapper took place after he witnessed "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk." He was 21 and had a career epiphany - rhythm tap was what he wanted to do.

But he didn't have time to learn the technique. He waited four years before he could steal away for a few weeks from the Irish dance circuit and traveled to New York City to explore the art form. "It really opened up the world to me."

Since then, Devine has established his own production company, "Devine Dance Company," which incorporates both forms of dance. In 2006, he and his ensemble won a Total Sell Out Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland for "Tapeire." He's taking a break from the splashy show for his small, trio tour. However, the essence of what he does in "Tapeire," fast footwork to funky tunes, is the hallmark of every thing he does."

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