Top 44 Savion Glover Quotes

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.

My personal style at this point in my life is more audio; it’s more driven on less visual and more musicality. But because of my upbringing, my fabulous mentors and teachers that I’ve had throughout my dance journey or career, I also possess a style that is of the past. It was just a matter of me reaching back.

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.

There’s a whole new generation who know about tap dancing thanks to ‘Happy Feet.’

Every now and then, someone comes along – we used to call it ‘New Jack’ – tries to do something new, tries to take all the credit, without acknowledging the past.

I’ve changed my whole angle for dance. I’m moving towards moving back rather than hanging out with my peers. I’m reaching back to older dudes for a second.

When you think about John Coltrane, in my opinion – and I think I share this opinion with a lot of people – his approach to music changed other people’s approach to music.

I don’t deal in terminology, I deal with expressions: colors, shapes, tones, characteristics.

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.

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 was first introduced to dancing through the TV: I remember watching ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing when I was very little. But I felt no connection with it whatsoever: it was just like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

I wake up, and I’m in the zone… My performance is the continuation of my life.

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.

When I wake up in the morning, I just go.

There are people who take tap class, do a tap dance. And then there are people who know the dance, who know why they take tap classes. Who know why they do 20 shuffles, or 50 shuffles, before they go on.

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 like to be around dancers who are totally committed to the art form, totally committed to the men and women around them.

We need these figures who don’t exactly go against the grain but create a new grain.

I search for different tonalities in my taps. But my greatest pleasure is hearing a note I haven’t heard before, hearing a chord that sparks something new.

Whether it is Jimmy Slyde or Lon Chaney or Gregory Hines, their dance shows what they experienced, what they had to go through.

I don’t think I’m a genius. Not yet.

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.

I’m going to continue to tap until I can’t move.

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 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.

I’m continuing the educational process of getting people to accept dance as music.

I want to entertain, but I’m interested in a whole range of feelings.

I love riding my ATV 450.

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.

Tap’s foundation is jazz, just like hip-hop, so relating tap-dancing to rap is natural for me.

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.

The sound of tap is not ‘clickety clickety tap tap,’ this monotone thing. The sound of tap has depth. We want you to hear the different highs and lows, the bass, the trebles and the melodies, if you can.

I’m more a percussion instrument than a dancer.

I’m thankful I am able to continue to share the joy and the inspiration tap brings.

I go for a nice walk in my neighborhood and search for vinyl, old jazz, classics. Then I go home and listen to them.

Movie making is such a long process, and they only use that one take, although you do it over and over about 30 times. Live theatre is that one time and one time only.

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.

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.

I actually wanted to be a fireman when I was younger.

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 deal with more complex rhythmical patterns than a regular tap dancer. I even think in rhythms.

Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.

I was a drummer in a group called Three Plus. We were performing at a club in New York, and my mother signed me up for tap classes. I fell in love from the door… so you can blame it on my mother.

I’m committed to the purity of my art form.