By Maddie Orton
Arts Correspondent
It’s two hours to showtime and Tony Award-winning tap legend Savion Glover isn’t relaxing in the green room.
“You’re not really supposed to be seeing this,” he announces to the camera. “This is a top secret thing going on here, but I’ll let you in because you’re from New Jersey.”
The Newark-native is, in fact, prepping his own stage for sound check — taping 48 mics down to the tap floor, one at a time.
“This is how I get into show mode…Getting ready,” he explains.
“That doesn’t stress you out before a show?”
“No,” he says. “If I wasn’t doing this, then I’d be walking around thinking about doing other things.”
And Glover’s always doing something, whether it’s performing here at the State Theatre with his current tour, STePz, or teaching at The Hooferz Club, his Newark-based tap school. Glover was even the tapping toes behind the animated film Happy Feet. It’s a work ethic he developed young. After all, Glover had his Broadway debut at age 10.
“My mother signed us up — myself and my two older brothers — for tap classes. I was 7,” says Glover. “And then, two years later, I’m auditioning for The Tap Dance Kid.”
It was a PBS staple that gave him his first TV gig.
“They called me up,” Glover recalls. “I was supposed to do a week. Just one week of [episodes]. Then after that week, they asked me if I wanted to be a regular on Sesame Street. And who would turn that down?”
Arts education is big focus of Glover’s. “I believe that once one is able to sing or draw or act or dance or express themselves in different ways,” he says, “then their outcome may be different.”
He says The Hooferz Club, his school in Newark, takes a holistic approach to teaching dance. “We make sure that the history is taught. And not only do we allow the students to understand about the dance, but understand why they want to dance,” says Glover. “What we concentrate on is allowing students to learn how to express themselves, not tap dance.”
He hopes to turn out tappers who are great at storytelling — a skill that’s applicable far beyond the dance floor. All the while, he’ll continue telling students the stories of trailblazing tappers who came before him — his inspirations.
“It’s just to make sure that the stories,” he says, “and legacies, and the traditions, and these people’s names: Jimmy Slyde, Gregory Hines, Ralph Brown, all of these great contributors, all of my teachers… My aim is to make sure that their stories continue to be told.”
And for that reason, Glover’s a self-proclaimed “disciple of tap.” He’ll admit that he may have helped generate interest in the art form as a young person dancing to funk music, but don’t say that he “made it cool.”
“Gregory Hines made it cool!” he exclaims. “Sammy Davis made it cool! Bill Bojangles Robinson made it cool. Whoever was doing it at the time for their particular generation made it cool.” And for the Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk generation, that’s him.