Tap / Savion Glover

Savion Glover is currently the most famous and arguably the best active tap dancer in the world. He appeared in films in his teens and was considered to be a child prodigy. Many would have become conceited and would have disappeared overnight but Savion have managed to further improve his initial image and reputation through his hard work and devotion to tapping. His movements are far from graceful but his tapping is extremely fast, clear and precise. Sometimes critics claim that his tapping lacks the nice little flavours of the old school but at this speed these demands are hardly reasonable. In this video extract from Sesame Street, he dances with Snuffy, who complains that "my back half can tap dance but my front half can't". Fortunately, Savion shows him how to overcome these difficulties and the happy Snuffy can go home and show mummy his freshly learned skill.







In 2006, Savion was motion capture dancer for the penguin Mumble in the animated film 'Happy Feet'. Motion capture is a special technology that transforms the data of movement into digital format. More and more video games, films and animated films use this technology. Motion capture uses many cameras which take pictures from many different directions. These cameras capture motions instead of shapes. In the case of 'Happy feet', Savion's tapping was recorded in a studio with a special equipment and this data was turned into animated movements. As a result, Savion's very distinctive style of dancing comes out in the little penguin's dance movements very precisely. In the film the young penguin cannot sing and because of this inability becomes expelled from the penguin colony. However, the little fellow has a real talent in tapping and this starts a series of great adventures. In the following video, Savion and other creators of the film speak about the motion capture technology they used and there are some cool and funny extracts from 'Happy Feet'. Don't get discouraged by the Spanish text at the beginning, the video is in English.







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