Glover's feet set rhythms

DANCE

Glover's feet set rhythms

Tapper to appear at Power Center

BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT

News Special Writer

Telling the dancer from the dance can be hard, but it is usually a snap to tell the dancer from the music.

Not so in the case of tapper Savion Glover, who, along with two alums of his hit show “Bring in ’da Noise/Bring in ’da Funk,” Marshall Davis Jr. and Cartier Williams, makes an Ann Arbor Summer Festival appearance Sunday afternoon at Power Center.

“This is going to be bare sounds,” said Glover in a recent phone call from his New Jersey office, “just two other dancers and myself giving the audience and ourselves a chance to enjoy the dance as music. There will be no other instrumentation, just the sounds of tap.”

No one is likely to object - or to miss the music - with Glover’s happy feet setting up the rhythms.

Does it make a difference to have music, and is it different to tap to different styles of music?

Glover responds: “I’m like an instrument myself. I’m playing music. It really doesn’t matter what the music is that I’m dancing to or playing to.”

The rhythmic structures may change according to the sound that’s being provided by the musicians, he allowed. But on Sunday, he, Davis and Williams are in complete charge. “In the show we’re working on, you become a solo instrument and it’s played out just like a concert,” he said.

“Imagine a trio,” Glover said, ’’with bass, piano and drums. That’s kind of like our situation. Everything that could happen in a trio, with bass, piano and drums, those are the same things that could happen in our setup.”

Glover said 90 percent, if not all of the show, is improvisational.

“Our approach to this is an approach to free music. We’re going to play a head, and then we’re just going to go. We may do some solos, there’s tons of room for improvisation, tons of room, and then we’ll take the song out.”

To make their music audible in the hall, the dancers perform on Gregory Hines Tap Dance Instruments, 4-by-8-foot oak panels mounted on 5-inch metal framing that, Glover said, “allow us to get the proper amplification that tap deserves at this point in time.”

“We treat them like a drum, a piano, timpani - whichever instrument we choose to imagine,” Glover said of the panels, which are miked.

“The shoe doesn’t matter at this point,” he said, answering a question about preferred tap footwear. “It’s just whatever I’m comfortable wearing. I’ve been experimenting lately with different comfortabilities in shoes.”

PREVIEW

Savion Glover

What: Tap great performs the show "Bare Soundz," with fellow hoofers Marshall Davis Jr. and Cartier Williams.

When: Sunday, 4 p.m.

Where: Power Center for the Performing Arts, 121 Fletcher St.

How much: $30-$45.

Details: Michigan League Ticket Office, 734-764-2538, and online at annarborsummerfestival.org.