Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Savion Glover - Page 2

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

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

I'm always inspired by music, things of that nature. Just life in general. I'm happy to be waking up and having another chance at it.

Great athletes last because they let the mental do all the work. What we do as hoofers is not so much a physical strain as everybody thinks. It's more of a mental stretch.

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

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

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

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

I did a production called 'Classical Savion,' where I did some Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Bach, Vivaldi, and all these great pieces.

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.

When you find real jazz on the radio dial, it comes in all static-y. It's just like tap dancers. You have to go uptown to find the real hoofers. We only come to midtown if we're called upon.

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.

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.

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.

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

The youth coming up is interested in dance now, and they're coming to the shows. That's a blessing for those of us who create.

I've never looked at what I do as show business, I guess, because of my connection to the art and how I was introduced to the dance.

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.'

I don't really care what the visual is looking like. I've gotten away from - not shenanigans, but spectacle.

They're taking away the arts programmes in the schools, and that's a terrible thing.

My show mode is that the dressing room is like going into the cockpit. Going down the stairs is like going on the runway, and once we begin performing, it's flight time. I'm just floatin' on that stage.

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.

I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don't get into a position where they're saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died.

I'm a basketball freak.

Every performance is different because I'm different; my mood is different.

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

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 don't think I'm a genius. Not yet.

A tapper sticks to existing routines. Whereas hoofing... a hoofer pushes the art form.

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'm just blessed, man. I'm just happy to share my art form with everyone. That's cool.

There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

La Cave was a great platform for me to learn and be able to listen in on conversations and just get a lot of notes and teachings from those older guys.

My style is ever evolving. My style is tomorrow.

Dancing is like life. The lessons of one are the lessons of the other.