Savion Glover - Notable Choreographed Pieces

Notable Choreographed Pieces

Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk

ABC special, Savion Glover's Nu York

ABC opening to Monday Night Football

HBO movie, The Rat Pack

Created a dance company called NYOTs (Not Your Ordinary Tappers)

PBS for President Clinton in Savion Glover's Stomp, Slide, and Swing: In Performances in the Whitehouse

Savion Glover/Downtown: Live Communication

When Glover choreographs a piece, he improvises as he generates a dance sequence. As glover teaches his dancers for Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk during rehearsals, he frequently stops during his improvisation and asks his dancers, "Hear the beat?" Savion has a keen sense of music and rhythm. He can hear a lot more of what is going on than what his performs can. As he listens to every beat of the music, he can transmit it straight to his feet. Savion likes to stop and listen to the lighter sounds, in order to give his dancing a distinguished power and force created by his obsessive examination of rhythms. Glover doesn't know where his talent to find special dance moves comes from, but he doesn't question it. Anything can happen when he is in rehearsals because he creates his every move on the spot, never really thinking or worrying about what he doesn’t know beforehand.

As he finds rhythms, he listens for new sounds at many different points on the stage. "I'm feelin' the stage for sounds. You might find a spot on it that gives you that bass; you might find a spot on the floor that gives you that dead type tom-tom sound." Watching Glover build and organize the intricate wave of rhythms is like observing a mathematical equation being set up and factored out. "I think what makes Savion an incredible artist is his extraordinary joy in what he does. He is able to live in that state of joy and not compromise his emotional complexity like the earlier tap dancers had to," says George C. Wolfe. He is as much a composer as he is a choreographer.

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