Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.
Savion GloverRead
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.
Interpretation
Artists have signature elements that resonate with their audience.
In this quote, Savion Glover emphasizes the importance of signature styles or techniques in art forms such as comedy and music. Just as a comedian relies on a familiar joke or a jazz musician uses a well-known riff to engage their audience, a tap dancer employs distinctive steps that highlight their unique expression and connect with the crowd, showcasing the value of consistency in artistic performance.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a workshop on artistic expression.
Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.
For me, the importance in learning about the dance is using it as a voice. It's not about a step, it's about a way to express oneself.
There are many different styles of, and approaches to, tap. My own leans towards a more intellectual view: tap dancing not just for the sake of entertainment but to educate and spark emotion.
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.
I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.
My mom couldn't afford dance shoes, so she put me in these old cowboy boots with a hard bottom so I could get some sound out. I used them for seven months. When I finally got real tap shoes, I was nervous. I kept moving my feet, thinking, 'Oh, so this is how it's supposed to sound.'
Literature has become my life.
Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
In an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological discovery. But when you write fiction, you don't know where you are going - sometimes down to the last paragraph - and that is the pleasure of it.
And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life.
There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.
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