Savion Glover - Happy Feet The Culture Show

Hey Mars, Janes getting kind -- jeans getting kind of tight,

brother. Savion Glover is no ordinary tap

dancer. He's been described as the greatest of all time, the Michael

juror don of his -- Michael Jordan of his art form.

From child prodigy to global star, Glover's George Bush yip has been a

re-- journey has been a remarkable one. Striving to make tap dance

relevant to new generations. In a career full of surprises, he's

brought a revolutionary hip-hop presence to Broadway and was the

inspiration for Mumble, the dancing penguin in the award winning film,

Happy Feet. Glover's tap dance style is rooted

in African-American history and he's a passionate torchbearer for the

great tap innovators of the past. With performances at Sadler's Wells

in London next month, this film explores his art, life and the black

tap dance tradition he's a vital part of.

A few miles west of glitzy Manhattan sits the city of Newark, New Jersey,

a completely different world and home to Glover's tap dance studio

The Hooferz Club. Ready. Today he's busy rehearsing some

intricate rhythms with long time friend and collaborator Marshall

Davis Junior. It was really complex. I heard you say gang, gang there. I

couldn't place it in what you were doing. Could you... Could you kind

of break it down for me, for an amateur what was happening there.

There t was a series of sounds, if you will, that we've been toying

around with for now, maybe two years maybe, two or three years, going on

three years. And hour fun and goal here is to see

how you, the audience, how many different ways you can hear the same

step. Right. It has to do with sometimes where we place the

accents, but it's basically the same step. Basically it sounds like

you're giving me a clue at the beginning and the end, which is

quite nice. I keep getting lost. Let me count it off for you. One, two,

three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Once you get past the steps in the combination there's something more

to deal with, that's the musicality and the dance.

You run out of steps before you run out of sounds. I'm 40 years old,

man. No! No way! I say that in reference to tap dancers. When I was

like 18 and 21, I had a lot of steps. My challenge was to cut you

down. I was going to win. That was my intentions, my goal. I was

writing on the bottom of my shoes like "Your momma! Cut' em. Get' em"

Crazy stuff. I grew up here in Newark. It was like, oh, I'm going

to get you. I'm going to get you through tap dancing. When I leave,

you're going to remember me. Growing up in this notorious Newark

neighbourhood seems to have really shaped Glover and his approach to

dance. I'm keen to find out more about the early days.

I was born and raised here, this is any neighbourhood right here. Where

you see nothing, this is where my home was, right across the street

from little bricks, these little projects here. An empty lot, but

your house... Was right here. To it? It's not here any more. I guess the

government is doing another project. I don't know what is going to be

here. But this is where it all started. We weren't really allowed

to go over here. This was one of the most dangerous little projects in

Newark, one of the most. So my mom wouldn't allow us to go over here

but once I got like maybe 16 or 17, I started to go over there because I

wanted to play basketball with those kids. They were good. So we would

sneak over there, then come back. Miss Sugar would tell my mother that

we would go across the street. We'd get in in trouble. You tell people

that you were a tap dancer? Did everyone know? I didn't really talk

too much. Why was that? I mean, that just wasn't my style. What we did in

New York or stuff like that, we did over there. When we came back here,

it was about what's happening here. Ly speaking, what were some of the

things you and your friends were into? It was hip-hop, man. It was

rap. When I came out of the house, I was B-boy. I grew up in the B boy

era. I won trophies breakdancing. Newark helped you forge your own tap

style? Definitely. My energy wouldn't have been as it was had it

not been for me being from Newark. I can guarantee you that. Newark is a

chocolate city. It's unlike any other city, it's unlike any other

place. You just got to know how to survive. I got Jacked one time, over

here, right over here on 12th Street or whatever. We walking back from

one of the restaurants and the cat pulls up around the corner. Open the

door, double pump shot gun, like, yo, give me your money and take off

that link. I must have had over $200 in my pocket. I was performing at

the time. I said, "I don't have no money. I can give you my gold

chain." I gave him the chain and get it moving. Man, that's intense.

Yeah, man. It's like something out a movie. Yes, man, it is, you know it

can happen. You grow up with that mentality at the same time. I think

that is also what makes us strong. You're list tong his feet, but then

you're looking at the fantasm. There's a kind of other-worldly

quality to the way he moves. He moves for the purpose of the rhythm

he's trying to make, like if there's -- there's nothing contried about

what he's doing -- coftrived about what he's doing. He's a master of

rhythm, so his movement is so varied and unpredictable.

Savion can tap on anything that was tapable. There was just no stopping

him. I put him in tap school. He took it and ran with it. He had

rhythm throughout his entire body. Others were quick to notice Savion's

precocious gifts and in 1984, aged just ten, he was cast as a lead in a

hit Broadway musical, the Tap dance Kid. The dance was just

choreography. It wasn't expression, as I know it now, to be. The roots

of this epiphany came the following year in Paris for a show called

Black and Blue. He appeared alongside the legends known as The

Hooferz Club -- the Hoofers. I walk into this studio and you know, there

are dancers there, they have on leg warmers. They're stretching and all

of this. Then there's some cats up in the corners like smoking and

just, you know, kicking it. They still have their clothes on and what

not. I'm like, oh, wow, I kind of gravitate to them. Come to find out,

these are the cats, it's Jimmy Sly, it's Buster, it's raffle Brown, it's

the great tap dancers. -- Ralph. They were a group of

ageing tap dancers who specialised in a per ussive -- percussive and

expressive type of tap dance. Like Louis Arm strong always said, you

don't have to plap the notes as written, play them as you feel.

Dancing is similar, because you have to feel it to really execute. The

group's members had stayed true to their heart -- art, keeping it alive

when public interest tailed off in the 60s and 70s.

Tap dance is a form of communication. It is a language that

speaks to the soul. The Cheney approach to tap dancing is about an

experience as a people in this country. It's about pain. It's about

joy. It's about so many different emotions versus just tap dancing for

the sake of, I'm going to do this dance routine and think nothing of.

It -- Of it.

The origins of the Hoofers approach can be traced back to slavery. Drums

were banned on American plantations, so slaves came up with other forms

of rhythmic release. They could not take away our sense of expression.

Now, some of it came through body, you know, doing things here. Some of

them came through vocal. But then we're talking about it, a lot of it

came through dance. These ancient rhythms were passed on

and developed through generations of African Americans.

What really inspired him is Chuck inspired him. And we need more

people to join in to keep it alive. When we came up under these cats,

there were not many young people interested in tap dancing any more.

It was only the old cats. I would see what they were doing. And I

would just want to be around that. I'd want to try and try and try to

get it. If I couldn't get it, I'd come up with my own version of what

that could be. I'm you, for instance, and I come in

and I'm like, hey, how's it going? What you got. Show me that thing

that you do. No, it wouldn't be me saying, show you. What you working

on lately? I say, I'm working on this. Oh, yeah, let me see you do it

like this. OK yeah, work on that. Then they go over here and have a

cigarette. An hour later or whatever, I'd go to them, I've been

working on it. Oh, yeah, oh, that's nice. Man, look he think he got

something. Then he shows this cat and the next cat over here thinking

about something else. You never know what you was learning. You never

know what you were learning or who you were learning from, you just

knew you were learning something. I didn't necessarily have a father

figure around. I had uncles and older brothers. But these cats just

filled that void. They filled that gap. I just owe it to them, you know

what I mean? That's it. Savion's enviable dance education

took another huge leap fwhord he appeared in -- forward when he

appeared in Tap, the 1989 film that brought together an array of tap

dance stars in a unique challenge scene.

They all had their own different styles, man. That is what made them

the individuals that they are. Like nobody wanted to copy anybody. Yeah.

Here's the King of them or! Yeah! -- of them all! Back-up, back-up! That

is the only seemed a shot that day. When they were shooting this,

everybody came. -- the only scene. Building something. Everybody came

to see this. Everybody was just so amazed. First of all that Sammy

Davis Junior was tap dancing. We were like, wow! Dancing opposite

Sammy Davis Junior was Gregory Hines, a sleek moderniser who took

Savion under his wing. Gregory was the first tap dancer

ever, I can say, to do anything like this.

Now, what idea it was... -- what idea was -- what I'd do -- did.

You know what I'm mean. But Gregory...

It was different. Master and apprentice would soon go

toe to toe in Broadway show Jelly's Last Jam.

You could see that Gregory really motivated Savion. Savion didn't take

it for granted being one stage with Gregory. He was applying everything

that he had been learning and was still learning.

But Savion wasn't just learning about a style and approach to

tap-dancing. Many of his mentors had been young performers during

Hollywood's so-called Golden Age of the '30s and '40s, when tap dance

was all over the silver screen. But pioneering African-American

dancers barely featured, and those that did, like Bill "Bojangles"

Robinson, had to endure servile, racially stereotyped roles.

The more I found out about... This, these clips. The more upset I got.

It's strange to see such an incredible innovator almost becoming

like a child. A parody. Of what African-American culture was. First

of all, he taught this girl, Shirley Temple.

I don't want to go up there! Everything wish she would go on to

know about dancing. -- everything she would. If it were not for him,

there would really be no Shirley Temple. Maybe because I'm a little

prejudice to the tap dancing, I don't know any movies that Shirley

Temple... Was in without Bojangles! And these days... I want to do that,

too! Talk about typecast! They only did one role! Bojangles, he was the

butler in this movie, he was the Butler... That is what they were and

it gave people, I would imagine, the sense that when you saw them often

in the scene, well, if there was a white man around, you had better

believe, Bojangles, you had better open my car door and get the

luggage! But in order for you to be in film,

you have to accept some of these misrepresentations in order that

there be at least a representation. Yes, I agree with that. These showed

a sense of grievance, a sense of integrity. They wanted to break the

barriers. -- a sense of courage. They wanted to let the world know,

Hollywood know that it was OK they were paving the way. For black

entertainers today. Throughout his career, Savion has

lent his own energy and invention to stair dancing.

But Bill "Bojangles" Robinson isn't the only artist he's paying tribute

to. The 1940s saw the super-suave

Nicholas Brothers take the concept to gravity-defying extremes in the

film Stormy Weather. The best dance sequence ever created in the history

of film-making. And one shot! That's how perfect and fabulous this

was. Watch this guy! Watch this! He thinks... Watch what Harold does

now. He thinks Harold's going to hit him, so watch what Harold does.

Watch what he does! Oh! So that's like... He was watching this guy and

thinking, how about this? Notice also, in all of these films, they

don't have tap shoes on. So they had to over dog these taps. These are

soft shoes. There are no taps. In some clips where you might see a

white tap dancer, those were overdubbed by a black tap dancer. My

favourite. Ow! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ow! Ow! I

mean, but look at the conditions. These guys 30 years later have to

have hip replacement and whatnot. Why? Because they are forced to

dance on this concrete. It's not wood, there, there's no bounce to

the surface. Again, they are pulling off this fabulous act under the

worst conditions. With a smile. Drawing both inspiration and ire

from the past, in the mid-90s Savion and director George C Wolfe began

working together on a revolutionary new show, Bring In Da Noise, Bring

In Da Funk. You know, we did a show that was about the history of

America, the history of black people in America. And what we had to deal

with in our lives. Bring it!

Every single moment of the show was rhythmically controlled. It was both

raw and sophisticated. Sarid will and the Broadway audience was seeing

the world from a point of view that they had rarely seen before. -- it

was sophisticated and Sarid -- cerebral. Funky!

The scene "Taxi" saw Glover satirise trying to hail a cab in NYC as a

young black man. Because I used to be thinking that I

was, like, boxing and stuff. Just to see a young guy above the hip-hop

era and with very hip-hop persona and presence bring that to tap was

just astounding. It was a revelation. What was interesting

about Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk was that you were able to

inject some of that anger, all of that anger that perhaps earlier

generations weren't allowed to do. Yes, there's a line in the show

where the character Little Darling, and the uncle was there, uncle

Huckle Buck, and we all knew it was about Bojangles and Shirley Temple.

Basically, you are just tearing down stereotypes. Yeah, and allowing the

next generation to know. Bring In Da Noise, Bring In da Funk

electrified Broadway, winning a clutch of Tony Awards. And the Tony

Award for best choreography goes to... Savion Glover!

What we experienced as black dancers, people were no longer

interested in hiring white tap dancers for a long time. And it was

just an opposite thing. The white tap dancers couldn't get a gig

unless you came in like this! And doing this hip-hop kind of tap!

Over the years, Savion's approach has shifted and developed,

performing to a wide range of music, while remaining a trail-blazing

virtuoso. Whatever I am at what ever point in

my life I'm at, that is what is going to be produced through dance.

It means something. It all means something. I don't just tap dance

for the sake of tap dancing. I tap dance because I want to communicate

something. What do you hope will be the legacy that you... I don't want

to say leave because you're only 40! Is not even about me, you know?

There hasn't been enough recognition given to these men and women

responsible for what I am. I'm nothing without them. So we have to

acknowledge Gregory Hines, Cheney, all of these great tap dancers and

contributors. Who have come before me. My legacy should be, like, I'd

know, what was that with Savion? He was in and he was out! -- I don't

know.