Modern tap meets classic jazz
Modern tap dancer Savion Glover integrates the rhythmic and melodic patterns of jazz onto the stage in a touring concert with acclaimed pianist McCoy Tyner.
by Colin Dabkowski
It was a scene that dance teacher John Fredo had seen more than once.
In the early '80s, at a tap dance school where Fredo taught in Midtown Manhattan, a woman walked in with her two young boys. She wanted them to overcome their stage fright, and saw bright futures for her children as entertainers on the stage.
And Fredo, then a dancer in the company of famed tap dancer Maurice Hines and now a popular Buffalo actor, began teaching the boys the tap technique. Soon enough, it became obvious that the younger boy, only 7 years old at the time, had a special talent.
"He was an old man trapped in a little boy's body. Not an old man, but an old soul," Fredo said. "When he started to tap, it just seemed to come to him. He would incorporate certain technical things, but as soon as those were out of the way, something else was happening."
That "something else" eventually morphed into the modern tap dance phenom Savion Glover, whose trademark dreadlocks and free-flowing tap style have shown up in the popular musical "Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk" and Spike Lee's 2000 film "Bamboozled."
Now, Glover will combine his efforts with the renowned and prolific jazz pianist McCoy Tyner in a tour that comes to the University at Buffalo's Center for the Arts. The performance, described as a show where "the keyboard meets the floorboard," combines the very upper echelons of two artistic forms that seem increasingly anachronistic.
But for Tyner, who spoke to The News in a telephone news conference, jazz and tap are practically synonymous, and their shared history is reason enough to revive this old tradition.
"If you look back in history, most tap dancers tap to jazz, the rhythmic patterns of this particular music that I'm involved in all these years," Tyner said. "I'm glad to see it happen again as much as possible."
And Tyner ought to know. He's explored those rhythmic patterns with some of the great musicians in jazz history, including Elvin Jones, John Coltrane and many others. He's played an integral role in many of the most important jazz recordings of the last 50 years, including Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" and "A Love Supreme" and more than 80 of his own records as a bandleader. Somewhere in all that, Tyner also won four Grammys, though one suspects they are the least of his accomplishments.
During the performance, Glover's feet act like another percussion instrument — albeit a more fluid one. But, like any other instrument, Glover will trade phrases with other members of the trio and integrate himself rhythmically and visually into the group's sound.
"Savion is like a horn player," Tyner said. "He's a great improviser. He just does it with his feet, you know? And we connect that way, rhythmically and melodically as well, because he's like an instrument."
For Fredo, Glover's talent is a singular force, one that continues a long line of tap dancing talent that started somewhere around Sammy Davis Jr. and embodies the spirit of both Gregory and Maurice Hines.
"I feel as though Gregory really saw him as the one that was going to continue the torch and to sort of move into that world. And as it stands, he's almost the only left," Fredo said.
When he ran across Glover at a performance in Tennessee some years ago, Fredo couldn't help but be proud of his small role in the tap dancer's career.
"I just felt so good that in some way, shape or form, I was part of that person's life."
