Not pushing it. Playing it.

Dorrance, who grew up in Chapel Hill, is in the touring cast of "Stomp," the hit stage musical that creates a primal, energetic percussion performance using household objects -- pots, pans, trash can lids, push brooms.

Dorrance, the daughter of Ballet School of Chapel Hill founder M'Liss Dorrance and UNC women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance, has become one of the world's best female tap dancers. She lives in New York now, where she's on the faculty of the Broadway Dance Center, but she recently returned to the area with "Stomp," which was at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium last weekend.

Roses to Lynden Harris and everybody else involved -- there are a lot of them -- in Hidden Voices' latest project, "Because We're Still Here (and Moving)."

The project involves a stage performance, a very cool community map and other elements, but like most of Hidden Voices' endeavors, it's much more than an arts piece. The organization is dedicated to bringing to light the stories of people who are otherwise marginalized, whose stories don't otherwise get heard.

In the case of "Because We're Still Here," those people are the longtime residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro's traditionally black neighborhoods. The stories they have to tell are remarkable; they paint a portrait of an incredibly vibrant, close-knit and caring community that existed largely out of sight and out of mind of the dominant white society. For more than 150 years the residents of that community have faced challenges stretching from slavery, Jim Crow and segregation to more recent struggles such as the loss of neighborhood ties to redevelopment and gentrification.

Stories that go untold for too long are lost altogether. In bringing to life the history of neighborhoods like Sunset, Tintop, Pottersfield and others, Hidden Voices has done our community an invaluable service. The project has broadened and deepened our knowledge and understanding of our own home, and reminded us of values, such as looking out for our neighbors, that we do well to remember. We're much the richer for it.

Roses to Chance -- aka K'Instant Success Moravia Campanella -- a local Briard who was named Best of Breed at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show last week.

The Briard is not quite as familiar to the average dog person as, say, your basic golden retriever. Briards are large dogs bred for herding; they come in a variety of colors, and, so we're told, can change color during their lifetime.

To the non-expert, their most distinctive feature is their hair, which is very long and falls like a curtain over their eyes. "Interestingly enough," says Wikipedia, "Briards with lighter colors in their fur are often mistaken for haystacks."

Not much chance of that happening to Chance.