Tap dance entered the 2000s fighting for relevance in a pop-culture landscape dominated by hip-hop and electronic music. It emerged as something stranger and more vital: an art form that could honor its jazz roots while speaking to contemporary audiences through stripped-down percussion, theatrical innovation, and viral digital moments. The following five works—spanning Broadway revivals, concert tours, film, and experimental stage—demonstrate how tap reinvented itself without losing its soul.
1. Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk (2008 Revival) — Savion Glover
Year: 2008 | Venue: Signature Theatre, Arlington, VA | Format: Regional revival with original choreography | Availability: Archival footage; cast recording streaming
Savion Glover first electrified Broadway as the teenage star of this 1996 musical, but his 2008 revival at Signature Theatre revealed an artist who had spent twelve years deepening his practice. Where the original production roared with full orchestration and historical pageantry, this stripped-down version placed Glover's feet at center stage—literally. The iconic "The History of Tap" sequence, now performed by Glover as both narrator and sole dancer, became a meditation on Black labor and artistic inheritance rather than a celebratory revue.
The revival's most devastating moment came in "The Lynching (Strange Fruit)," where Glover's taps transformed into a percussive equivalent of Billie Holiday's phrasing—spaced, breathless, refusing resolution. Critics noted that Glover, then 34, had developed the calf strength to sustain extended one-footed phrases that would have been impossible in his youth. This was tap as endurance art, history made physically present.
2. Bare Soundz Tour (2007–2010) — Savion Glover with Marshall Davis Jr. and Maurice Chestnut
Year: 2007–2010 | Venue: National and international tour | Format: Concert performance | Availability: PBS Great Performances broadcast (2008); DVD
If the Noise/Funk revival showed Glover's theatrical maturity, Bare Soundz demonstrated his radical formalism. Three dancers, three wood platforms, one drummer (Tommy James). No microphones on the feet—Glover insisted audiences learn to listen for unamplified tap as acoustic music. The 90-minute program moved through jazz standards, original compositions, and extended improvisations where the three dancers traded phrases like horn players in a bebop session.
The piece "The Blues" built from solitary heel drops to polyrhythmic density, each dancer occupying a different meter until they locked into unison for four bars, then scattered again. Glover's program notes stated his intention plainly: "Tap is music first, dance second." For audiences weaned on amplified, spectacle-driven dance, Bare Soundz demanded a different kind of attention—concert-hall listening applied to bodies in motion. The PBS broadcast preserves this intention better than most live tap recordings, with microphones placed to capture the full frequency range of wood and leather against maple.
3. Charlie's Angels (2001) — Jason Samuels Smith
Year: 2001 | Venue: ABC Television | Format: Emmy Awards broadcast | Availability: YouTube (unofficial clips)
Jason Samuels Smith's 90-second Emmy performance shouldn't have worked. The premise—tap dancers as action heroes, complete with wire work and explosions—read as desperate grab for mainstream attention. Instead, Smith delivered a masterclass in maintaining rhythmic integrity under impossible conditions. Dancing on a stage covered in artificial fog, surrounded by backup dancers in evening wear, Smith executed a series of wing variations that cut through the visual noise with percussive clarity.
The choreography's genius lay in its structure: Smith began with recognizable Broadway-style vocabulary, then accelerated into the faster, flatter-footed style he had developed in Los Angeles clubs, where tap competed with DJ culture. The transition happened mid-phrase, without signaling. Viewers who knew tap recognized the historical reference; viewers who didn't felt the energy shift. Smith won the Emmy for Outstanding Choreography—the first tap dancer to do so since Hermes Pan in 1958. The performance remains a case study in how to honor tradition while speaking in a contemporary vernacular.
4. Step Up Revolution (2012) — Stephen "tWitch" Boss
Year: 2012 | Format: Theatrical film (Summit Entertainment) | Choreographer: Jamal Sims with Boss contributions | Availability: Streaming (Netflix, Amazon Prime)
Stephen "tWitch" Boss entered Step Up Revolution as an established presence from So You Think You Can Dance, but his tap sequence
