TAP DANCE LEGEND SAVION GLOVER IN CLASSICAL SAVION AT TOUHILL, OCTOBER 20-21 2006
September 14, 2006.....Top-flight tap dance meets classical music hits and wild jazz when Dance St. Louis brings tap dance superstar Savion Glover to the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center on Friday and Saturday, October 20 and 21 at 8 p.m., in his new one-man sensation, Classical Savion. In an evening of non-stop bravura dancing, Glover creates dazzling dialogues with music of Vivaldi, Bach, Mendelssohn and more, all played live onstage by an orchestra and jazz quartet.
Classical Savion is sponsored by Ameren. Tickets are $30-$65. They are available at the Dance St. Louis box office in Grand Center at 3547 Olive St., the Centene Center for Arts and Education. They are also available at the Touhill's box office at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, by phone at Dance St. Louis at 314-534-6622, and via dancestlouis.org. Handling charges apply to all phone, Internet and outlet sales.
Dance St. Louis Artistic and Executive Director Michael Uthoff will host a free program, Speaking of Dance, with Burt Reynolds of the Classical Savion production team in the Touhill's Terrace Lobby at 7:15 p.m. prior to both performances.
From whiz kid to accomplished master, from a young regular on Sesame Street to the Tony Award-winning creator of Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk, 32-year-old Savion Glover has established himself as not only one of the greatest tap dancers of all time but one of the greatest dancers of any kind. "The first time I ever saw him dance, in Noise/Funk, I had the same experience as the first time I saw Nureyev and Baryshnikov," says Michael Uthoff, Dance St. Louis artistic and executive director.
Already renowned for infusing tap with the sharp attacks and rhythms of hip-hop, Savion Glover in Classical Savion further smashes barriers between genres--between tap dance and classical music, and between classical music and jazz. When the members of his jazz band, The Otherz, join the orchestra of strings and harpsichord on stage, each classical musician gets a turn to improvise while Glover makes up steps on the spot. The entire ensemble swings into a wild communal improvisation freely based on music of John Philip Sousa, Stars and Stripes Forever (4 Now), for the full-out finale.
Glover takes off from the music's own rhythmic currents, melodies, and formal structures. He is inspired to create an astounding variety of sounds, from delicate cascades of whisper softness in Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to raucous stomping in Stars and Stripes.
While the rhythms spill out of Glover's metal-studded shoes, he is physically possessed by the music--swooping in circles, lunging into the floor, springing up on his toes, skidding, sliding and spinning across the stage and into the wings.
Savion Glover is not the first dancer to tap to classical music, but the length and variety of Classical Savion, and the superstar status he has earned with his stunning intensity, explosive energy, and fervent imagination make Classical Savion uniquely pathbreaking and thrilling.
"There are very few musicians who understand music as well as Savion," Classical Savion's conductor and musical director Robert Sadin has said. "He absorbs the music; he knows all the inner parts....Whether you're just listening for the tap or know the piece very well, Savion is raising it to a higher level."
Classical Savion is "a young artist's declaration of what culture is for, the link it provides to something greater than yourself and your lifetime, all the choices it offers that you can explore and possibly enhance," said Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times, in November 2005.
The classics include selections from Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Felix Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings, J.S. Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto and Orchestral Suite No. 2 in b minor, Antonin Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12, Dmitri Shostakovitch's String Quartet No. 8, and Béla Bartók's Rumanian Folk Dances, as well as other music announced from the stage.
Performer, choreographer, and director, Savion Glover received a multiplicity of honors for his choreography and performance in the Broadway musical smash hit Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk : the 1996 Tony Award, 1996 Dance Magazine Choreographer of the Year Award, 1996 Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, two Obie Awards, and two Fred Astaire Awards .
Glover was born on November 19, 1973 in Newark, New Jersey. He made his Broadway debut at age 12, starring in The Tap Dance Kid, and his film debut at age 13 in Tap with Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis, Jr. For five seasons he was a regular on Sesame Street. In 1997, he created a dance company, NYOTs (Not Your Ordinary Tappers), with which he performed nationally and internationally. In 2000, he toured the nation with Footnotes: the Concert featuring tap legends Jimmy Slyde, Buster Brown and Diane Walker. In 2001 he created a new dance company called Ti Dii. He is the choreographer of the award-winning Nike spots "Free Style," and the star of Spike Lee's feature film Bamboozled.
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