The Nicholas Brothers were the best tap-dancers. I'm not talking about their flash-dancing, I'm talking about tap-dancing. They were really saying something with their feet.
— Savion Glover
I'm going to continue to tap until I can't move.
I'm still growing, still learning. I'm still open and vulnerable enough to know there's much more to be taught to me and learned by me. I hope I don't reach my pinnacle on this earth where I think I know it all.
I did a production called 'Classical Savion,' where I did some Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Bach, Vivaldi, and all these great pieces.
I dance anywhere. I just start moving my feet.
I've never looked at what I do as show business, I guess, because of my connection to the art and how I was introduced to the dance.
My show mode is that the dressing room is like going into the cockpit. Going down the stairs is like going on the runway, and once we begin performing, it's flight time. I'm just floatin' on that stage.
I'm just blessed, man. I'm just happy to share my art form with everyone. That's cool.
A tapper sticks to existing routines. Whereas hoofing... a hoofer pushes the art form.
I go for a nice walk in my neighborhood and search for vinyl, old jazz, classics. Then I go home and listen to them.
The youth coming up is interested in dance now, and they're coming to the shows. That's a blessing for those of us who create.
Every performance is different because I'm different; my mood is different.
It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.
We need these figures who don't exactly go against the grain but create a new grain.
They're taking away the arts programmes in the schools, and that's a terrible thing.
For me, the importance in learning about the dance is using it as a voice. It's not about a step, it's about a way to express oneself.
I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.
I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.
Tap is still the central driving force of my life. I think and talk in dance.
I'm always inspired by music, things of that nature. Just life in general. I'm happy to be waking up and having another chance at it.
Tap dancing is like... it's equivalent to music, not only for the African American community, but also for the world. Tap dancing is like language; it's like air: it's like everything else that we need in order to survive. I'm blessed and honored to be knowledgeable of the art form and to be a part of the art form.
I try new stuff every time I perform. I have steps I do that I know are definite, and stuff I can make up right then and there and then forget.
La Cave was a great platform for me to learn and be able to listen in on conversations and just get a lot of notes and teachings from those older guys.
My mom couldn't afford dance shoes, so she put me in these old cowboy boots with a hard bottom so I could get some sound out. I used them for seven months. When I finally got real tap shoes, I was nervous. I kept moving my feet, thinking, 'Oh, so this is how it's supposed to sound.'
What does genius mean? God has put us here specifically... every person has a job or journey to do. It's just a matter of finding what we're here to fulfill or execute. That's genius to me.
There's a tendency to think tap's had its day, but 'Happy Feet' kept us in the race. That penguin is our Shirley Temple.
When you find real jazz on the radio dial, it comes in all static-y. It's just like tap dancers. You have to go uptown to find the real hoofers. We only come to midtown if we're called upon.
I'm a basketball freak.
I want to entertain, but I'm interested in a whole range of feelings.
I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap.
The spirituality of the dance, that's something that's evolved for me in the past ten years or so. I'm still trying to figure out where that's taking me.
You can go to see a singer and love the show, but you don't need to know all the songs. What you want to do when you leave is go and find out more about the music.
What we're looking for at my school is intellectuals. People who want to talk about the art and be knowledgeable about it. People who want to know the history. Not everybody needs to be performing.
Just like a comedian has a certain joke or a jazz musician has a riff that they know will get the crowd, a tap dancer always has a step.
I don't like being too serious. I'm the type of person that, if the mike isn't in the right place when I go on, I just move it. Other people, they'll be all frantic. I'm more relaxed.
I am realizing and accepting my role as a tap dancer in this world is not only to tap dance for the sake of performance, but through tap dance be able to share and spread a message and congregate with people I would not necessarily be with had it not been for dance.
When I'm on TV or whatever, I'm able to bring my instruments, my board, and my sound is intact. But other kids who are on TV, when they're doing tap, sometimes they're just on the regular floor. It's not as safe; it's not as sound-worthy as it should be.
I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all.
I feel it's my duty, my job, now to allow people to hear the dance to different genres of music, to ensure audiences have the chance to listen to tap dancing up against all these other styles.
I don't think I'm a genius. Not yet.
I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don't get into a position where they're saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died.
There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.
I'm continuing the educational process of getting people to accept dance as music.
Great athletes last because they let the mental do all the work. What we do as hoofers is not so much a physical strain as everybody thinks. It's more of a mental stretch.
Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.
There's a whole new generation who know about tap dancing thanks to 'Happy Feet.'
I deal with more complex rhythmical patterns than a regular tap dancer. I even think in rhythms.
I'm committed to the purity of my art form.
I don't deal in terminology, I deal with expressions: colors, shapes, tones, characteristics.
I don't really care what the visual is looking like. I've gotten away from - not shenanigans, but spectacle.
