Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap's Afro-diasporic roots, particularly its connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music, and its lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk).

Led by Brazilian choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and by composer Gregory Richardson, their work embraces tap’s unique nature as a blend of sound and movement, incorporating wide-ranging influences like samba, passinho, Afro-Cuban, jazz, and house.

Music from The Sole will perform I Didn’t Come to Stay at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center on July 15th.

I Didn’t Come to Stay was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

Commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim, I Didn’t Come to Stay was created with the support of a summer 2020 Works & Process bubble residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park. This culminated in preview performances that were among the first outdoor performances permitted by New York State. I Didn’t Come to Stay was featured in a Works & Process at Lincoln Center video performance and will receive a Works & Process LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” residency at Catskill Mountain Foundation, with additional residency support by The Yard, Jacob’s Pillow, and Chelsea Factory. I Didn’t Come to Stay is a National Dance Project Production Grantee.

Photo: Titus Ogilvie-Laing