Glover and Colbert

I happened to see a post on Facebook that Savion was to be on The Colbert Report last night, but I saw the post too late to catch it.  However, in this age of round the clock availability, I was able to watch it online today.  Sav is certainly a major force in the tap dance world and when I saw his recent show at The Joyce, I felt he was continuing to grow and mature as an artist.  I also found the first half of the show particularly spiritual and moving.  For me, that response had to do with his focus these days on the sound of tap rather than the look of it.  There was even an extended section of him dancing in the dark.

Here are some of his thoughts about tap and a performance with his new group of dancers.  Also dancing with him is the great Marshall Davis, Jr.

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Time REALLY Flies!

So, the last time I wrote on this, I thought I'd be "back" a lot sooner.  Well, a hot summer, a new house and basic laziness have all contributed to me not posting anything on this blog.  But it's not like nothing has been going on.  May gave us - Tradition in Tap, honoring Bob Scheerer and Tap Extravaganzas in Flushing, Queens and Manhattan, both of which I had the pleasure of performing in.  In June, Savion Glover had his annual Joyce Theater engagement, doing a show I really liked.  With July came Tap City (NYC Tap Festival), a two day event called, "The World of Tap" at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, the first NJ Tap Festival and Roxanne Butterfly presenting her show at Joe's Pub in NYC.   Out in St. Louis, their tap festival wrapped last week and starting next week is the LA Tap Festival.  Of course, this is only part of the tap festivals and events that have been going on around the globe during these summer months.

There is much to talk about concerning the above, but one of the things I found most enjoyable recently was the episode of the TV show, "Psych" that featured some tap dance.  One of the co-stars, Dule Hill, is an outstanding dancer, being a veteran of the Bway show "Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk", but is probably most known to the general public as an actor because of his work on "Psych" and "West Wing".  He evidently had a hand in finding a way to incorporating tap dance into one of the show's story lines.  He also was instrumental in getting Jason Samuels Smith to be in the episode.  It was very good and the kind of thing that needs to happen more often to get tap seen by the general public because, sadly, I still hear "civilians" say that they did not know tap was still going on anywhere.  The other recent TV exposure of tap was Melinda Sullivan on the show, "So You Think You Can Dance".  I confess that I did not even know about her doing that show until into her tenure on the show, since I don't really watch most of that kind of stuff on the tube.  She didn't make it to the end, but one good thing is that I hear Harold Cromer wound being on one of the show's episodes with her.  Good for the world to see him!

If you missed the "Psych" tap, below is a little of what happened on the show.