Shiggidy bock bock bock…shiggidy bock.
Savion Glover’s fans cheered at the utterance of his opening sounds — understanding him perfectly, speaking his tap dance language. Though his show still exudes ‘Savion’ – his attitude and his tap – with age, Glover’s choreographic speech has unboubtedly evolved.
Though Glover’s hoofing in the past conjurs images of roughness and the street, his performance now through March 22nd at The Joyce Theater of his new SoLo in TiME, reveals the elegance of hard-hitting taps through the union of his native style with flamenco.
The drumming of Carmen Estevez preceded the curtain’s rise, immediately indicating that the audience was in for a night of nonstop rhythm. Illuminated by three overhead spotlights, the dim stage further forced the audience to rely on sound rather than sight.
Opening with “Ci Ci,” Glover first took the stage on an elevated wooden platform, like a conductor ready to lead his orchestra. And so he did.
Hoofers Cartier Williams and Marshall Davis Jr. accompanied Glover on their respective wooden platforms, slightly upstage of the maestro. Their fusion of tap and flamenco, hitting percussively to the accompaniment of Estevez, Andy McCloud’s bass and Arturo Martinez’s guitar, seemed natural.
Integrating intense but slight movement in the feet with the traditional flamenco rhythms in clapping hands, each dancer sounded like a one man band. To incorporate the multitude of rhythms in one body was no doubt challenging, yet it appeared effortless.
The hoofers alternated seamlessly between sections of Glover’s improvisation, overlapping the rhythmic undertones of Williams and Davis Jr., and choreography. Together, gently lifting their bodies and floating back down to the platforms, they informed the audience of the grace of tap and flamenco.
Whether it was the vibrant Spanish flavor or simply Glover’s maturation, Glover’s style in body carriage appeared much different than those of us who remember the bent in half, head down Glover of Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk – which garnered him the Tony for Best Choreography in 1996.
His face, now turned upward, gleaned in the light. With a stiff upper body in the first two numbers, “Ci Ci” and “Gigantic Steps,” Glover looked more like his long time mentor Gregory Hines.
His upward tilt opened him up to the intimate audience of the Joyce. Though his tap, especially his improvisation, was no doubt personal, this time it appeared less introspective and more like a cathartic unloading of emotion.
What’s more, Glover fed off of Williams, Davis Jr. and the instrumentalists onstage. During “Blue Afro’z,” Glover relinquished his downstage center platform to Davis Jr. Although this switch would traditionally signal Davis Jr.’s occupancy as the new focus, the switch actually served as a means to get Glover closer to McCloud and his bass.
Using the two rigid notes of the bass as inspiration, the hoofer’s feet followed Glover’s lead to vibrate with the bass’s tone. It was as if the sound flowed off the bass’s strings and into their feet — astonishingly organic.
Closing the first act with a jazzy tune, “Skip a Beat” built upon the fusion of tap and flamenco as the hoofers alternated between distinct even Spanish rhythms and syncopted American pop rhythms. Glover smoothly demonstrates the breaking down or total lack of cultural boundaries through tap.
The second act featured Glover’s collaboration with Spanish vocalist, La Conja. Rather than Glover gaining his inspiration from within and expressing inwardness through tap, he drew from La Conja, his muse. Her song lured the impressively complex tap out of him.
But, so as not to completely favor flamenco and lose sight of fusion, Glover interjected a little American barber shop song “A Stack of Magazines” as an aside. The three hoofers sang and soft shoed beneath a ’street lamp’ before the entire cast returned to the stage.
The final three numbers radiated passion and fervor. Featuring Martinez on acoustic guitar, “The Guitar” softly murmered — Glover serving as the reverberating echoes of the guitar’s strings — before exploding in energy that captivated the full cast and the theater.
Closing with “Starz and Stripes for the Saintz,” the cast blasted the audience with the ultimate fusion of improvisation and choreography, slight foot movements and full body throws, tap and flamenco.
Through innovation and powerful collaboration, Glover broke cultural barriers — or perhaps demonstrated that in dance there are none.
Unlike past performances, Glover’s goal was not to assert his separate identity, but to demonstrate its merger with another. SoLo in TiME begs the audience to question if tap and flamenco are, in fact, different art forms after all.
