Savion Glover Visions of a Bible Glover, Savion performer Concert 2005-12-20 The Joyce Theater Through Jan. 15, 2006, Glover makes a triumphant return to the Joyce with a series of solo performances. Notes from Constance Valis Hill on the January 13, 2006 performance: An audience filled with brothers and sisters of all ages. A brick wall, rudiments. A 12X18 foot maple floor. A very scaled down bare-bones performance. with singer Lori Ann Hunter and The Otherz (Tommy James, piano; Patience Higgins, Andy McCloud, Brian Grice). His Eyes on the sparrow; just her solo voice and his tapping. Peace Be Still; repeated over and over again, repetition becomes a mantra; the heel is the bass and brings us back to the phrase; repetition is meditative. Glover pushes the expressive possibilities of the beat. The sound of the word peace is a mantra. You ride on the word "master"; conjures up slaves on Africa trans-Atlantic journey brought up to exercise. The drum dancing is the unswerving force of the only thing enslaved Africans could take with them. "Master" sums up both the lord and the power over them. Peace Be Still: a sacred mantra, a prayer, a warning, a hope, an escape from sorrow. Minimal. No music. Only voice and body drum. No flaps or shuffles: flat foots; scrapes, displacements off the toe and heel; tip-toe-heel treading the floor. A percussive hymn to the African American church; Gospel; God spell. It's joyous "I'll go if the Lord wants a body." I'll go. Glover's dancing is very resolved much more grounded in rhythmic phrases: we hear, we follow, he lets us do that; we follow. God Is, God Is... Then the musicians: piano, bass, drums, flute. Savion is sweating by the end of second dance; he is working, nothing that dies that bodily commitment. They echo Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" but without crediting Coltrane's masterwork in the Program! Hark the Voice; God Is; Visions of a Bible Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Hill, Constance Valis: Constance Valis Hill, personal collection of tap dance materials. (). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Savion Glover (biography) loc.music.tdabio.98 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.1366