DaytonDailyNews.com

By Terry Morris

Staff Writer

DAYTON — After 15 years, some of the living daylights had been pounded and stomped out of "Stomp."

It was time to go back to the scrap yard/rehearsal studio for some new ideas.

The results will be on vivid display and clearly in earshot when the crowd-pleasing tour rumbles back into the Victoria Theatre on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 18-19, with a few new tricks up its workshirt sleeves and at the receiving ends of its clubs and garbage can lids.

For an orchestra, a similar evolution might mean the addition of a new instrument or instruments.

"Stomp" has incorporated paint cans and ribbed industrial tubing into a show whose performers combine physical strength and agility with the ability to turn anything and everything they manipulate into percussion instruments.

Brad Holland, a seven-year veteran of the blue-collar drumfest, was glad to talk about it by phone after calling in an order for hotel room service. He has to keep his strength up.

"For us, the show has never been the same. It's about 75 percent choreographed and 25 percent improvised. It's like playing your favorite songs with your favorite musicians every night.

The self-described "tall white boy from Alabama" joined the show fresh out of majoring in musical theater in college. He was one of just 11 people chosen from a pool of 1,100 candidates at a New York audition. By the end of his first year, only five of them were still in the show.

"It's hard. It's very technical. But I get to work with others, including a Brazilian capoeira artist and a dancer from L.A. We're all different. Together we're a think tank of talent. Each of us becomes a hybrid. We all learn from each other," he said.

He performs four of

the roles in the show — a different one every night. He's also the co-rehearsal director.

"We just spent two weeks in Burlington, Vt., changing 50 percent of the show. We took out four numbers (including the basketball section and the plungers), added four and mutated some of the rest. There's a lot of new music," he said.

The paint cans are used as flying instruments. "They're empty. We juggle them. You have to hit them when they're flying through the air before they hit you. We've had a few black eyes," said Holland, who just got engaged to schoolteacher from Ohio.

"We kept in the brooms number and the hands and feet one. The oil drum walk is still there, stuck in at the end. We have some new stuff, including tractor tire inner tubes. We're still working out the kinks, but I feel like a whole new Stomper," he said.

Co-creators Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas decided to change the long-running New York production and North American tour after a new variation called "Stomp Out Loud" began in Las Vegas.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@coxohio.com.

how to go

What: "Stomp"

When: 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18; 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19

Where: Victoria Theatre, First and Main streets

Tickets: $47, $39, $29

Call: (937) 228-3630, (888) 228-3630 or order online at www.ticketcenterstage.com