Author: Linda Shapiro

My brothers and my mother were all dancers, outside of whatever else they did, like acrobatics, high wire, trapeze,” Donald O’Connor once said. The Hollywood dance icon knew inherently why a dancer is like a circus performer: because both create physical illusions by subverting gravity and harnessing momentum. During his classic and clownish “Make ’Em…

On the O’Shaughnessy stage in St. Paul, forty dancers get up in glittering military chic and tap in perfect unison to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. They toss off complex steps, inject some get-down hip-hop moves, maneuver in kaleidoscopic patterns. A panel of judges scrutinizes the proceedings as the audience hoots and hollers. This is…