Opinion | Right-wing pundits tremble in fear of … tap-dancing

Festooned with wide smiles, whimsical headpieces and a healthy helping of sequins, the dancers percuss their way around the White House. Familiar characters from the “Nutcracker” — such as a rodent king and the young heroine Clara — sprinkle kinetic joy through the East Wing’s Christmas trees. The video opens and closes with saucy flourishes from “Sugar Rum Cherry” (performed by co-choreographer Josette Wiggan).

The piece is wholesome and exuberant. As a longtime admirer of Dorrance Dance, I watched the two-minute clip over and over when it was released and gushed over it with my dance-nerd friends.

Not every viewer was enthralled, though. Over in the right-wing mediaverse, people practically lost their minds.

The G-rated performance, which happened to feature some dancers of color, was “woke nonsense” and part of the “Biden freak-o-rama,” declared Fox News host Laura Ingraham. She said it was designed to “offend” the public and appeal to “flag burners and the America haters.”

“Anything connected to the American tradition has to be reimagined and then remade through a far-left lens,” Ingraham said of the troupe’s take on the Russian Christmas classic, adding that “it is kind of a big middle finger to Christians in this country, I think, and frankly to all Americans, not just Christians.”

Newsmax host Eric Bolling called the routine “replete with tasteless perversions” and “beyond woke.” Former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller lambasted its “freakishness.” The Federalist called the video an “abomination” and an attempt by the Bidens to slip “radical Marxism into the country’s Christmas celebrations.”

Who knew anyone could get so triggered by jazz hands?

Anyone who thinks this “Nutcracker” rendition is “freakish” must have never seen the original. However weirded out these grinches were by a syncopated jaunt through the White House, trust me: Tchaikovsky’s classical ballet is way weirder. The original ballet plot involves possessed dolls, a tall man in drag who hides children under an enormous skirt, Russian Cossacks dressed like candy and a terrifying, seven-headed mouse. It’s like a tulle-filled acid trip.

More importantly, consider why these reactionaries were upset by this particular adaptation.

Some were pretty explicit that what set them off about the tap-dance troupe was that it has — gasp! — Black people in it. (“It’s diverse as hell. They had to do that. It had to be a DEI video,” said Newsmax host Rob Schmitt.) Most, however, objected to materials on the dance organization’s website devoted to fighting racism and lifting up Black artists.

“It is our job to tell the history of tap dance as a celebration of Black culture and also the never-ending struggle against systemic racism and white supremacy in this country — the origin story of appropriation in American culture,” writes the troupe’s founder, MacArthur “Genius” grantee Michelle Dorrance, who is White.

Maybe this sounds “radical” to Fox News hosts or others accustomed to thinking of dance as bland, apolitical amusement. But tap is a uniquely American art precisely because it is infused with the country’s racial history, including the ugly parts.

Historians typically trace the origins of tap dance to enslaved Africans and their descendants crossing paths with Irish Americans. Contemporary tap draws from the traditions of two distinct populations, forged through voluntary immigration and forced migration, who deployed rhythmic dance for both entertainment and protest.

Despite this, it was White artists who were most able to financially benefit from this art form as it mutated through the mediums of jigging, minstrelsy, vaudeville, Broadway and a segregated Hollywood. Tap exemplifies the beauty that can be wrought out of pain and injustice — and rewarded with further pain and injustice.

Even today, Dorrance acknowledges that more people might have heard of her than the Black tap pioneers on whose shoulders she stands (or, uh, time-steps), such as the legendary Dianne Walker. This awareness is partly why Dorrance is so deliberate in how she crafts her work, including in the choice to tour a tap-dance Nutcracker created “with the spirit of inclusion.”

“I believe in tap dance, an art form born of resistance and individual expression, as a powerful vehicle for both joy and social change,” Dorrance said via email.

Perhaps, then, the right-wing cultural anxiety surrounding this charming White House holiday video is not entirely baseless. Tap in general is deceptively subversive. And this particular holiday performance features Black dancers, interpreting a work co-created by a Black choreographer, using an artistic medium borne of the Black diaspora, performed in a seat of global power built by Black enslaved people.

Rarely has there been a more American Christmas story.