savion glover at orchestra hall

I went to go see Savion Glover at Orchestra Hall last Sunday and he was absolutely amazing. The set featured 2 other dancers and, having never seen a tap show before, I can safely say that should he ever come to town again I will definitely be getting a ticket. Each of the 3 dancers was stationed on a wooden box elevated above the stage with an acoustic mic pointed down at their feet and at no point was there any sort of "music" other than the rhythms they tapped out.

It was such an interesting show and I wish I had gotten some sort of illegal picture to show for myself. I've never actually sat through a 2-hour "concert" where there was only one color of sound to listen to. The advantage to this was that you started to pick out different timbres within the tap sound itself (which were amplified even more when the choreography would sync up between the 3 dancers) whether it was from where they hit on the box, the weight of their feet coming down or what part of their foot was hitting. And when Savion did finally sing during one of the pieces it became much more meaningful. He introduced himself as "Barack Obama" after intermission and the crowd totally flipped out. Even the kids got into that one...way cool.

Here's a video from YouTube that has excerpts from the program they danced. I got some good ideas to use for this upcoming 3-movement work in French I'm starting on for Chapman University.