It is one thing to describe a work as a hybrid of tap and contemporary, it is another to encapsulate the arc of such an unusual synthesis; because this marriage of styles is more than mere experiment.
When Melbourne based company Studio Stocks debuts its new work, Melancholia, at Chapel Off Chapel in February 2025, it will close a circle. Or rather, that’s the journalistic cliché. The truth is much richer.
“Tap dance was my first true love,” says Garry Stocks, dancer, choreographer, teacher, and one time member of The Australian Ballet. “It’s what I started with when I was about eight. I think I saw the second show ever of Tap Dogs [in 1995], and that was inspirational.”
By the age of 12, he knew that he wanted to “dance all my life.” At 14, he discovered ballet, with which he was instantly taken. Before long, he was auditioning for The Australian Ballet School and leaving home to live in another city. Four years later, he was offered a contract with the company and a life in dance stretched out in front of him.
However, this is where the story of precocious talent diverts. As Stocks recalls, although he danced with the country’s premier company for “roughly 10 years,” the lines were rarely smooth. “I had quite a lot of injuries during my career, but the one that tipped everything over the edge was when I had stress reactions in my shins. Basically, mechanically, the injury healed, but my brain didn’t understand, and so I was in 10 out of 10 pain 24/7. Like, constantly.”
To illustrate this, he adds, “I couldn’t even walk. I remember that after some of my final shows at the Opera House in Sydney, I was literally stumbling to get home. I laugh about it now, but I wanted to get on the ‘community bus’ that all the elderly people got on.”
Ultimately, no amount of determination could hold back the tide. “That’s when I knew that dance was not an option. I mean, I couldn’t even put bed sheets on.”
We all experience pain, many of us in a chronic form, but Stocks’ condition was extreme.
After six months of searching for an answer, he was diagnosed with a condition known as Central Sensitisation Syndrome, whereby the body becomes hypersensitive to stimuli, registering even the smallest stresses as pain.
As Stocks explains, “All pain comes from the brain, so all my messaging was basically screwed up from having a lot of injuries and dancing with pain for quite a long time. So, the body just learns how to be in pain.”
Having gone from mainstage acclaim to bedridden nadir – lost passion, lost livelihood – he began again with first steps. Literally. As in, learning to walk.
“It took about a year or two to really progress that; and it got to a point where I was able to walk on a treadmill for half an hour a day…but I just got so bored with it; and the pain physio was like, ‘Maybe it’s time to explore an activity that’s more stimulating.’ So then I started to think, ‘Maybe I could put my tap shoes on.'”
Here is where the seed of Melancholia was planted. With steps.
Before too long, Stocks felt ready to try doing a class. He went to The Space (a well known dance academy in inner Melbourne), and when he woke up the next day, he realised that he was “no worse.” This may sound small, but in the context of his recovery, it was massive.
Looking back, the realisation is clear. “It really started to help me,” he elaborates. “I don’t know, it was a pretty dark and depressing time in my life and, to be honest, I really wanted to switch the light off…I mean, I never thought I’d dance again, let alone become a leader in the tap community in Australia.”
From the painful low, he gradually found his way back to dance, and to his boyhood passion. Today, aside from running tap classes under the Studio Stocks banner, he also teaches ballet at the Patrick School of the Arts — all in addition to cementing an international reputation as a tap dancer.
However, standard ‘overcoming adversity’ narratives were never enough, and do not fully capture the impetus behind Melancholia. Reflecting on his journey, and on what it has given him, Stocks declares, “I’m not going to wait for opportunity, I’m going to create, which is something my 20-year-old self would not have thought about. Now, much later in life, I feel like I don’t have anything to prove anymore. Like, I just want to make art.”
In this light, the sheer choreographic ambition of Melancholia makes sense. Combining tap and contemporary seems like a stretch at first, but through the prism of Stocks’ experience, it scans as a natural outcome.
Recognising that he occupied a rare niche (professional level ballet and tap), he “jumped off the ledge.”
Of the work, he reveals, “It’s contemporary in the sense that I hope it says something, and that it’s not just pure entertainment. Tap is the core, underlying essence of this company, and everyone in it has that incredible, accomplished skill set, but we’re going to be doing things very differently.”
Thus, in addition to seven tap dancers, the work will feature a pas de deux between Stocks and his wife, Australian Ballet Senior Artist, Jade Wood. “This is where I feel it’s total uncharted territory,” he clarifies. “I’m basically tap dancing and partnering her in a contemporary dance, classical sense. She’s not in pointe shoes or anything, she’s more in socks, but…yeah, even though I can’t do ballet anymore, that partnering skillset is still there. Tapping and partnering is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle to choreograph, but it has the potential to do something.”
Yet, as we might expect from someone who has navigated such complex existential terrain, Stocks’ underpinning rationale for Melancholia is not simply choreographic.
Candidly, he muses, “I know it’s only four shows but, like I’ve said many times to people, I really feel like tap dance has saved my life. It was a really dark time and if I hadn’t put my shoes on about eight years ago…I don’t know. It’s not only given me a second lease on life; it’s made me realise how powerful dance can be.”
Often, especially here in the media, we revert to cliché as a proxy for meaning. Fortunately, human experience is there to remind us that the reductive mantras of marketing and the diverting spectacle of neatly packaged drama can never fully overwrite the immanent and beautiful agonies of our shared condition, nor erase its unique and personal expressions. Because art, however we wish to imagine it, so often defies our attempts to describe it.
Studio Stocks will present Melancholia from 13 – 15 February 2025 at Chapel Off Chapel in Melbourne. For tickets and more information, visit www.garrystocks.com/studio-stocks.
By Paul Ransom of Dance Informa.
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