Sharon Jones and Robyn: two of the best dancers in the world? That’s all I could think after watching Jones’s unbelievable performance with the Dap-Kings on Monday afternoon. Jones and Robyn simply made unheard of moves with their bodies, and it complemented their music wonderfully. One can get slightly distracted watching the fringe on Jones’s dress shake as furiously as it does, but it’s just a testament to how fast those legs of hers move.
Jones also conveys such emotion with her music, and can send a chill down the back of your spine with the way she exudes her feelings through her face and voice. During “Without A Heart,” Jones expressed the lyric "cold as ice," by halting the music and staring down the crowd with pure anger in her eyes. After what felt like a full minute, she puckered her lips into a kiss to the crowd and launched back into the song.
A fantastic highlight came when she brought an indie kid on stage to boogie with her, and he proceeded to dance the hell out of his opportunity. After he left, she started talking and singing about us going back in time in a machine called the Soul Train, and she added to it with dead-on renditions of The Swim and The Jerk. All the while, the talented Dap-Kings supplied terrific back-up music, playing rapid beats and turning it up a notch whenever the song called for it.
“She Ain’t A Child No More” had an added verse about child abuse, and it was a pretty heavy moment. Jones also took her heels off (that’s right – she can shimmy as fast as she does with heels on) to tell the history of her family, through dance. It began with the ritualistic moves of her African ancestors and continued on through the centuries, including a tribal dance she did in tribute to Native Americans.
Toward the end of the set, we were served with a sweetened “I Learned The Hard Way” and a less sassy, more sexy “Better Things To Do.” Whenever Jones had a story to tell, it felt like she was talking to us one-on-one, adding even more to her talents as a musician. Jones is definitely a dynamo performer, and I commend her and the Dap-Kings for putting on one helluva show after another.
