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Glover's magic of tap to shine in Salt Lake Feb. 22
By Diane Urbani
Deseret News staff writer
When Savion Glover was not there, it seemed as though a mass weeping broke out on Broadway.
"Ohh," the crowd moaned one Sunday afternoon in 1996 when the announcement was made that a non-Savion dancer was on his way to the stage of the Public Theater. The 22-year-old star was taking a rare day off from "Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk," his creation that mixed tap dance, hip-hop and history.
During the show's lengthy run, Glover only missed a few performances — and he won a Tony Award for the show.
Now he's coming to Salt Lake City, and he's not about to miss the chance to show an Olympic audience what can be done with a few centimeters of pounded-flat metal beneath his feet. "Savion Glover in Concert" is slated for Feb. 22 at Abravanel Hall.
"Noise . . . Funk" told the story, through Glover's dancing, of how blacks rose out of slavery to defy limits placed on them by American society. They arrived on American shores after having had their dignity stripped — but went on to make "something from nothing," as one of the show's passages demonstrates. That something was transcendent music, made with hands, feet and grace.
Tap dancing, the way Glover does it — and the way his inspirations, Jimmy Sly and Buster Brown, did it — is "self-expression. It's freedom."
It's also joy, fury and jazz. From the soles of his shoes to his slender, arcing arms, Glover produces a one-man orchestra with attitude. The Tony Award was just one of a spate of honors he received when he was still in his early 20s — two Fred Astaire Awards, two Obies, the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle prizes, among others.
"It's wonderful to be recognized," Glover said during a telephone interview from New Jersey, where he was "checking out" a performing arts center for a tap festival he'd like to organize.
"That's cool. It makes me realize how much I have to recognize my pioneers. Only through them and through God can I do what I do."
When Glover was 7, he saw Gregory Hines perform. "I just fell in love," he says. No need to explain further. Glover is a dancer, not a talker. He made his Broadway debut at 12 in "The Tap Dance Kid," appeared not long after that with Hines in "Jelly's Last Jam," also on Broadway. He rejoined Hines for his film debut a year later in 1987's "Tap," choreographed the HBO movie "The Rat Pack" and co-starred in "Bamboozled," a Spike Lee film.
Last year, Olympic Arts Festival director Ray Grant called Glover and invited him to Salt Lake City. "He has reinvented how people look at tap," Grant said. "He has that remarkable ability to improvise and to draw the audience into his experience. Close your eyes" and listen, and you'll understand Glover's power.
"Those feet," said Grant, are jazz instruments.
Nine other dancers and a quartet of musicians will accompany Glover in Salt Lake City. "We plan on rocking the house. We give it to them straight up. We don't dance around the point."
Glover called his Olympic engagement an honor. "In these times," he said, "I want to be part of anything that uplifts people's spirits."
Grant hopes to bring local people and international visitors together at the concert, to experience the American-born art form of jazz. "He pushes you," said Grant, "because he pushes himself. He makes you think about (tap) in a different way. People are expecting Gene Kelly," but they will witness something else.
Judith Jamison, the revered Alvin Ailey Dance Theater choreographer, is an unabashed Glover fan. "He's taken tap dancing to another level," and for that matter, "he's taken dancing to another level. He's next-generation."
E-mail: durbani@desnews.com
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February 15, 2002
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