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Jill Biden showed the world this year’s White House Christmas decorations with help from Dorrance Dance, a New York tap group.
Dorrance Dance was filmed tap dancing around the president’s home dressed up like characters from The Nutcracker. This year’s decor theme is “magic, wonder and joy” the Biden’s shared last month.
Sharing a video of the yearly decorations inside the White House has become a tradition in recent years.
Jill Biden shared the dance video from the White House
On Wednesday, December 13, Jill Biden posted the extravagant dance video to X, writing: “A bit of magic, wonder and joy brought to you by the talented tappers of Dorrance Dance, performing their playful interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite.”
Dancers from the troupe Dorrance Dance were filmed dancing in brightly-colored costumes, inspired by The Nutcracker. They began the performance by tapping in a candy cane-lined hallway in the White House before moving into the Blue Room, showing the impressively huge festive tree. The Blue Room has displayed the main Christmas tree since 1961.
The fun dance continued on into other parts of the house, showing the full decorations that truly lived up to the magic and wonder theme of this year.
Who is Dorrance Dance?
Dorrance Dance is an award-winning New York-based tap dance troupe that was established in 2011 by Michelle Dorrance. The group regularly performs in theatres up and down the country.
The company aims to expand its audience and educate the next generation of tap dancers through their work, according to their site. “We engage communities on tour with lecture demonstrations, workshops, and school performances. We hold an annual tap dance intensive for pre-professional dancers in NYC. We partner with dance education programs to bring the form to public school students of all levels,” they write.
Michelle Darance was previously awarded the MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 2015 and has credits for the Winter Olympics along with opening ceremonies for the Cannes Film Festival.
The group’s anti-racism ethos
According to the dance group’s site, anti-racism is an essential part of their mission and heavily influences their work as tap dancers. Founder Michelle Dorrance shared on the dance site that she is “a white tap dancer with Black cultural ancestors in a society that privileges white people and whiteness.”
“I am easy for white audiences wanting to access and experience elements of Black culture to swallow. My whiteness is the reason you may have heard of me before two of my inspirations, Ayodele Casel and Dormeshia, not to mention the legendary inspiration, elder, and griot, Dianne Walker. It is imperative for me, and those who look like me, to acknowledge that. It is imperative for us to fight against racist norms that have defined American culture since its very origin. If we do not do enough, this story will not change,” she continued in the post.
“In my generation, to be a tap dancer is to be an ambassador to the world for the unsung history of a Black art form. Taught, encouraged, and inspired by our elders to be more than dancer/musician-performers, my generation strives to be educators, creators, innovators, preservationists, and historians. 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.”
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