"Where would we be if we still had those kind of energies around?" Savion Glover told WNYC's cultural critic Rebecca Carroll, referring to the late tap dancer Gregg Burge, who died at 40 years old from a brain tumor, and choreographer Michael Peters, who also died young at 46. Glover used that inquiry as the premise for his new, limited-run show at the Joyce Theater called Lady5 @Savion Glover's BaRoQue'Blak TaP Cafe, which imagines a conversation with Burge through an ensemble performance. "If those cats were here, I think — not to discredit what the kids are calling twerking — we would be in a different place of understanding our body language."   

Glover has been tap dancing since he was a child, and he credits a community of elder tap dancers and choreographers for his own skill and talent, which he describes as less of a skill and more of a calling. "I am a vessel of energy that has put me here to make people respond," said Glover. "To make people cry, make people laugh." 

He's also an actor, and Glover has appeared in a handful of films, including Spike Lee's critically acclaimed and controversial 2000 film Bamboozled, which is satirical look at race and racism in network television by way of a modern minstrel show. Glover — who played a black star in blackface of The New Millennium Minstrel show — says he would take the part again today. Despite recent images of white people in blackface being unearthed on social media, notably an image of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam in a racist high school yearbook photo, Glover is undeterred because he thinks we have all evolved. "We are smarter." 

Lady5 @ Savion Glover's BaRoQue'Blak TaP Cafe is at the Joyce Theatre through July 7th.   

(Meanwhile, enjoy this iconic performance.)