So, Aden, LB, Luther, and I went to Dook to see Savion Glover tap dance tonight. Perhaps you’re familiar with Savion, the light-skinned brother with the dreads that can be found anywhere a tap dancer is needed (he is the only person I can name that pays his bills with the art) and starred in the brilliant Bamboozled. Maybe you’ve seen his infusion of hip hop into tap dancing and thought that going to see him would be a good idea.
I’ll just say this…good thing I didn’t pay to see him.

See, this wasn’t hip hop Savion that I saw. It was “Classical Savion.” Well, that’s what it said on the program. Wasn’t a lick of hip hop in what he did. It was him providing the percussion while an orchestra played behind him.
Luther fell asleep. Aden and I sent off text messages the whole time, itching for the moment to come where we had to leave and go to our intramural basketball game.
I can’t believe I wasted two sprays of Issey Miyake for that shit, man.
Perhaps my issue is that I’m not a fan of seeing something so decidedly diasporic turned into another chance to show that we can do what white folks do, also. All the energy that I know Savion for, all the flavor, and all the entertainment value was sapped dry from his routine. It was just utterly dry.
This is not to say that the cat ain’t talented. But the whole time I was there, I was wondering, “where’s the bass player?” Perhaps this is an indicator of my lack of culture, but that’s just me. They could have gotten rid of the cello player, called Bootsy Collins, and had a helluva show. Instead, we just saw him sweatin’ like a hooker in church while performing something that didn’t enrich or entertain me a bit.
Call me what you want, but I’m not too keen on becoming “cultured.” I’d rather be entertained. And since there is no social message or intellectual discourse coming from watching him do his impression of a low-budget Orkin man squashing bugs, I need to be entertained. I need something to keep me and Luther awake. Luther even stayed awake during Soul Plane, and that was the worst movie of the year not called Catwomoan.
But really, I just found this to be an unnecessarily bougie event that featured a cat whose real claim to fame is bringing tap dancing back to a gritty sort of level. Maybe the worst thing to happen to him was to get famous. Without fame, he wouldn’t be at Dook doing Dook things.
No, this being held at Dook didn’t help anything.
But who’s seen Savion live? Did he do the classical show? If he did, did you find it to be as wasteful of your time as I found it to be of mine? Help me out, cuz I’m just not that refined. In the words of Adam Duritz, “I’m just another boy from Texas.”