Savion Glover: a Pillow gig to savor!

June 21, 2005 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Went to a dance performance and a jazz concert broke out! That's what we took away from Savion Glover, with special guests Jimmy Slyde and Dianne Walker, which opened the 73rd season at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival - a feeling that we'd been treated to an evening of jazz, given by a quartet of musicians on piano, reeds, drums, and bass plus seven others on shoes.

Glover, whose prodigious gifts we first enjoyed at his 2003 Tanglewood Jazz Festival performance, has the stature in his field that Wynton Marsalis and Yo Yo Ma have in their's. He is choreographer, collaborator, soloist, generous mentor, grateful mentee, m.c., - he does it all, does it well, and gives the impression that he can't wait to get to work on the next project.

And the capacity audience in the Ted Shawn theatre didn't have to wait long before learning just what they were in for, as the program began with what seemed like the tap equivalent of a drum solo - like a Dave Brubeck concert opening with "Take 5" (or Cream opening with "Toad").

The opening number began with Glover and four emerging dancers tapping out a tattoo in unison while chanting a phrase from a lyric; one by one the four took brief solos and left the stage, leaving Glover alone to dance a loosely choregraphed tour de force, to the seamless accompaniment of the Otherz.

[The Otherz: Tommy James, piano; Brian Grice, drums; Patience Higgins, reeds; Andy McCloud, double bass. The other dancers: Marshall Davis Jr., Ashley DeForest, Cartier Williams, Maurice Chestnut.]

This was a special program for Jacob's Pillow and the inclusion of two dancers whose careers pre-dated STOMP and hip-hop was wonderful. It was a welcome display of artistic collegiality and allowed for the full range of this genre to be displayed.

Dianne Walker and Jimmy Slyde - eloquent jazz

The dances by Dianne Walker and Jimmy Slyde showed tap to be an eloquent jazz instrument, not merely an element of rhythm, but a leading part of the ensemble. While the tap soloists' palette may not be as broad or nuanced as a jazz vocalists is, it has, instead, a greater range of gesture that makes it more readily understood by the audience.

Glover's own interplay with the Otherz was sometimes intense, sometimes playful, and always to great effect. One piece began with Glover trading licks with Higgins (on soprano sax); for several minutes, Glover had his back to the audience and looked to be dancing at Higgins, who noodled away playing notes that echoed Glover's insistent taps but never admitting Glover's visual presence. The next moment, Glover sidles over to the other side of the stage and gestures "What's up?" to James at the piano, who leans toward him with an impish grin that says, "What's up, yourself?" and proceeds to play a run of notes that Glover gallops along to.

Glover took a few turns as crooner too, including Frank Sinatra's "The Way You Look Tonight." The finale was a great crowd-pleaser, everybody dancing to a tap-jazzified version of the Sousa march "The Stars and Stripes Forever," called "The Stars and Stripes Forever, For Now." The audience showered the dancers with wave after wave of applause.

As Executive Director Ella Baff stated in her introduction, "Dance and music together - It's a beautiful thing!" We agree.

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