Dazzling ‘Foot Notes’ Taps Into Excellence

In his new book, “My Life in Tap,” Savion Glover speaks of his feet as drums, his shoes as sticks. “Tapping isn’t about repertoire anyway, knowing steps, memorizing steps,” he explains. “It’s about making sounds, bringing sounds, bringing the funk.”

It’s this focus on tap musicality that unifies “Foot Notes--The Concert,” a two-act showcase for Glover, friends and mentors that opened Wednesday at the Wilshire Theatre and runs through Sunday. Using a platform stage rigged for maximum sonic variety in the same way he uses parts of his foot to produce different tones, Glover focuses on the dancer as musical instrument, interacting with a four-man jazz band to both embellish the musical line and form an essential component of it.

Gone the flash Savion tapping on the tips of his toes. Gone, too, except for a very brief interlude, the hip-hop Savion intent on keeping current with pop culture. Visual display may dominate the performances by 10-year-old tap prodigy Cartier A. Williams and 71-year-old tap master Jimmy Slyde but, in his own hyper-intricate, stamina-testing style, Glover presents himself here as a classic jazz musician. “It’s called ‘Foot Notes,’ ” he calls out midway through the astonishing solo that takes up nearly all of Act 1. “You get it? ‘Foot Notes.’ ”

Though you never doubt that you’re watching a great dancer and star at the top of his form, there are lows as well as highs. Technology, for instance, soon becomes a dead-end, with Glover toying inconclusively with the options provided by a stage floor rigged to allow taps to sound like pots and pans or gas jets or whatever, a la “Tap Dogs.” Even the amplified echoes of his own steps don’t inspire him significantly.

But when drummer and musical director Eli Fountain begins to play a triangle early in Act 2, Glover’s attempt to match the delicate shimmer of the sound as well as Fountain’s attack patterns fuels a sublime collaboration. “Check this out,” Fountain announces. “We’re gonna change keys.” And they do, both of them, perfectly matched and almost surgically precise. And if you never understood dance’s ability to suspend time, you understand it now in this brief, unforgettable flash point of nonchalant genius.

Initially glimpsed in a brief strobe-lit prologue, all of Glover’s guests except Williams present their solos in Act 2. In contrast to Glover’s flyaway physicality--the sense of rhythmic priorities determining how he moves--the linear suavity and fancy turns of Slyde’s engaging performance offer a sample of a whole other kind of tap fluency, one shaped as much by the look of the dancing as the sounds it generates.

Dancing to “April in Paris,” octogenarian James “Buster” Brown exemplifies the sharpness and physical/spatial economy of classic Copasetics Club style: nothing wasted, except maybe some of the jokes between numbers.

Glover had paid tribute to Brown and Slyde during the celebrated mirror solo of his Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk,” but his approach to dancing on Wednesday also forged a strong link to another guest: Dianne Walker, superbly fusing her steps with the pianism of Tommy James and always intricately, intimately into her music.

The punchier contemporary style we can call revival or post-rock tap that Glover embodies also released Williams’ spectacular heel-walking and toe-suspensions, the powerful muscularity of unbilled guest Dule Hill and the roughhewn authority of Gregory Hines (recruited from the audience, but already wearing his tap shoes).

Guests, routines and the messages on Glover’s shirts may change from night to night; on Wednesday, his tee rightly proclaimed: “I’ll Bee Dat.” You want a joyous entry to a newly revitalized dance form? “I’ll Bee Dat.” You want the first indispensable local dance event of AD 2000? “I’ll Bee Dat.” When it comes to tap, there’s not much that Savion Glover can’t “Bee.”

Besides the musicians already mentioned, the versatile, accomplished band enlisted Emmanuel Gatewood on guitar and Patience Higgins on brass and winds. Mike Baldassari provided the functional set and largely expendable lighting effects while John H. Shivers’ sound design and Rob Harari’s tap floor made possible all the notes struck by all the feet in this remarkable summary of tap excellence.

*

* “Foot Notes--The Concert,” tonight at 8; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Wilshire Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. $15 (students)-$57. (213) 365-3500.