Review: Savion Glover Thrills at Staller Center

Tap dance is unique among the performance arts in that it melds music and dance to the point where the two are indistinguishable, and it's a marriage which thrives and thrills in SoLo in Time, an organic new production from Savion Glover which came to the on Sunday.

But SoLo in Time differs from Glover's past works, including Bring in Da' Noise Bring in Da' Funk, in that it honors not only the traditions of the hoofers who came before but also the rich culture of flamenco. Glover was joined onstage by his friend and Bare Soundz collaborator Marshall Davis Jr. and the musical trio Flamenkina for a show that ultimately brought the near sell-out crowd to its feet.

Glover began his show with an electric solo that immediately set the tone for the entire performance, stepping onto a miked-up platform in a crisp red button-down shirt and jumping right in. The viewer had little opportunity to dwell on each individual moment because of his incredibly ambitious tempo, which was almost machine-like in precision, and so the clarity of each brush, scuff and shuffle was not compromised in the least.

As the opening solo progressed, the first strums of a guitar were heard as a spotlight illuminated guitarist Gabriel Hermida sitting at the edge of the platform. Glover and Hermida, a flamenco and jazz guitarist originally from Buenos Aires, faced one other as they mimicked and played off each other's rhythms, swelling to crescendo after crescendo with Glover himself playing the role of the percussion to Hermida's flowing melodies.

Two more musicians soon joined the mix, bass player Francesco Beccaro and vocalist/percussionist Carmen Estevez. It was at this point that the natural synergy of tap and flamenco began to emerge. If you closed your eyes, the venue may as well have been a foreign nightclub or concert hall with not Glover but a passionate bailaora (flamenco dancer) punctuating the music with the sounds of her own footwork.

"It's all one expressive rhythm," Glover explained in the program notes. "Percussive. ... I work to relate to that and try to pull the ancestral history of the Flamenco lineage through the dance."

Beccaro's basslines seemed to help Glover dig in a little deeper. The sultry, raven-haired Estevez, performing barefoot on stage straddling her box drum, lent a raw, almost tribal feel to the show with her vocals, particularly in the song "Tras el Telon." If anyone wondered how Glover would manage to actually tap along to its slow, mysterious opening, he soon answered by drawing his shoes in purposeful circles that complemented Estevez's performance with a hollow, almost wind-like sound before the song picked up in pace.

If the audience craved some acknowledgment from Glover of its presence, he delivered that, too, in a moment of humor. He launched into a solo, his gaze fixed on a front-row fan – whose name we would eventually learn was Alexandra – who was moving her own feet in time to his steps. When she stopped, he called to her.

"Please keep your foot going," he said. "You stop, you throw me off."

He called for a spotlight on Alexandra and continued his solo, stopping again to interact with the audience.

"Sorry," he said with a shrug. "We didn't rehearse."

That solo evolved into a duet as Davis took the stage for the first time, setting up the peak of the show. He sauntered onstage and picked up a rhythm that Glover had begun in the previous solo, completely in synch not only in terms of movement but also in intensity. Davis – whom Glover called his "architect" during a pre-show interview – is a star in his own right, taking a turn for a stylish solo of his own as Glover kept time at the back of the stage.

When they fell into a modern take on a classic tap duel – with one performing a few moves while the other fed his counterpart with a constant beat – the audience began to get vocal. As the two hoofers smiled to each other, bent forward and swinging their arms in time to their steps, it was as if the audience was privy to an intimate moment at a studio jam between friends. They built to a feverish, wild finish of complex footwork that brought some to their feet before the show itself was even over. This is what a tap show is all about, folks.

The final selection, "Starz & Stripes for the Saintz," was a musical mosaic that recalled rhythms that at times felt borrowed from hip hop, country and jazz. It's possible even a few distinct strains from "My Favorite Things" were thrown in.

From start to finish the whole effect was hypnotic, and a new relationship between two art forms – tap dance and flamenco – was forged.

Editor's Note: Stay tuned for a Patch Q&A with Savion Glover himself.