SATURDAY & SUNDAY

Fuh-duh-bap! When Savion Glover hits, it’s after leaping into the air, kicking his right leg out to the side, and defying gravity with his feisty, steel-plated left foot. His 12 1/2 EE shoes have shown up in a Coca-Cola commercial, a Puff Daddy videos, and on ABC’s Monday Night Football, continuing a rhythmic conversation that started 75 years ago in Harlem’s basement-level Hoofer’s Club. There, shiggi-diggi-diggi, tappers like Pegleg Bates, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Jimmy Slyde would cut on each other, trading shuffle for step in an exhibition of footwork frenzy. From the blues to ragtime to bebop, popular music carried the rhythm of hoofing on its heels, until the revolutionary ’60s and ’70s dared to shuck it away, cornering it in the stereotype of a smiling black man strutting for white laughs. But, eeliyoudumdum, Glover was born with tap’s old rhythm in his head, and after following its masters around and learning their smooth secrets, he coupled classical tap dancing with his youthful energy. His 1996 Tony Award-winning choreography in Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk confronted the images of the past while kicking defiantly to the raw beats of the hiphop generation. In his new show, Savion! The Concert, Glover tickety-bloo-kahs with the likes of Slyde, Dianne Walker, James “Buster” Brown, and Cartier Williams at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 25, and 3 p.m. Sunday, March 26, at the Warner Theatre, 13th and E Streets NW. $25-$55. (202) 783-4000. (Ayesha Morris)