The last time that happened, in 1975, the choreographer Michael Bennett built "A Chorus Line" in the Public Theater around some real-life Broadway dancers, then took it to Broadway, and so brought the ragged edges of the profession back to the never-never land of the musical. With just a word of suggestion -- "buck and wing," "Charleston," "Nicholas Brothers flash" -- Mr. Glover can capture lost eras without losing his own rap-informed, reggae-flavored tap style. "My funk," says Mr. Glover, "is a groove that you can ride -- but it's got to be a deep groove." Ms. Duquesnay strolls after him, singing "Chicago Bound," in her blues voice which mingles excitement, inevitability and the undertow of moving on. He "hits" his tap sounds ("hitting" is a key Glover concept), but he also swirls the sides of his feet, he goes up on his toes, comes down on his heels, he leaps and lands hard, or sends a trail of taps whispering across the stage. The script at the show's first workshop, on Aug. 14 last year, was nothing but a bulletin board on wheels with a few index cards tacked to it. He sent Ms. Duquesnay and the musical director, Zane Mark, downstairs to the Anspacher Theater with a yellow sheet of paper listing the Renaissance-flavored names of slave ships. The music in tap, or "the beat," as Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Glover named it while putting together "Bring in da Noise," is a metaphor for the serious part of the art that is linked to the origins of jazz and the hidden, immense contribution of the African diaspora to the American metabolism. Mr. Glover likes to use the whole foot when he taps, not just the cliche of toe-ball-heel. Eager All-American Dule Hill were child stars with Mr. Glover in "The Tap Dance Kid." Such path-breaking shows as the exuberant black "Shuffle Along" (1921), the slap-happy white "Good News" (1927), the mock-Russian "On Your Toes" (1936), the impossibly pastoral "Oklahoma!" "The piece is about all migrations," Mr. Wolfe has said, who is himself from the small town of Frankfort, Ky. "It's about physical, cultural, emotional migrations. "And we were in heaven.". The stage managers madly typed new material into computers as it appeared. The main element in it is a tap dance and the use of folk instruments of sound producing. Dance, in fact, has rescued musical theater at key moments when it seemed to be dying. The reserved and rubber-jointed Baakari Wilder and the cheeky Vincent Bingham were the local whiz kids in a Washington tap show that Mr. Glover starred in four years ago; the drop-dead nonchalant Jimmy Tate and Mr. ", See the article in its original context from. “…it is speaking to its audiences with an electricity and immediacy that evoke the great American musicals of decades past.”. .," said Mr. Glover, in his dressing room at the Ambassador Theater, smiling that smile as he reeled off a host of names of the tap masters of two generations who have been his mentor-fathers. They send tap statements out to metal-shod fellows that are answered in chorus. "Baakari's tapping," he thought, "can become the feet dangling from the rope.". “Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk” is a musical history of rhythm in African-American life told through dancer/choreographer Savion Glover’s explosive street-tap style. Mr. Wolfe deployed teams of people to different parts of the Public Theater building. Paula Scher. A scrim rises. Cast and crew are reshaping the show for its new home. Glover choreographed and starred in the musical, which featured a series of vignettes that chronicled African American history. batwin + robin’s projection design was an integral part of the creative evolution and visual execution of this innovative piece of theater. From this idea blossomed a vibrant, creative exploration of the beat and soul of black history through tap. Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk (Original, Musical, Dance, All Black Cast, Broadway) opened in New York City Apr 25, 1996 and played through Jan 10, 1999. And that tradition has been summed up -- re-enacted, you could say -- in the life of this tall, pale-skinned young black man with the dreadlocks and Che Guevara beard, the deceptively sleepy eyes and the slow, pure smile. Savion Glover's smash Broadway hit Bring in 'da Noise Bring in 'da Funk took critics by storm, and this album is a live recording of a performance of the show.The album progresses through five main movements of black history and tap. The very maleness of the dancing left the field open for the concept of "woman." The lighting designers, Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, discovered that Mr. Wolfe wanted them to use light in diametrically different ways, sometimes to set the scene, sometimes to visually express the music. Check out Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk (Original Broadway Cast Recording) by Original Broadway Cast of Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk on Amazon Music. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Scenic Design by Riccardo Hernandez Costume Design by Paul Tazewell Lighting Design by Jules Fisher/Peggy Eisenhauer How's everybody?' The script at the show's first workshop, on Aug. 14 last year, was nothing but a bulletin board on wheels with a few index cards tacked to it. In "Bring in da Noise," Mr. Glover revealed himself to be a choreographer who can create dance that is imbued with what Ben Brantley, writing in The New York Times, called "sheer articulate power." "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk" Book & Lyrics by Reg E. Gaines Music by Daryl Waters, Zane Mark, Anne Duquesnay Choreography by Savion Glover Recreated by Derick K. Grant Conceived and Directed by George C. Wolfe. The Chicago-bound section begins, one in which contributions from many sources have converged in one theatrical image. Lithograph. Nor is Mr. Glover alone on stage with the beat: in the course of his career he has wooed away other young converts from "show tap" to "rhythm tap," four of whom appear with him in "Bring in da Noise.". As he made up the fiendish steps, the other young tappers waded in bravely. "Urbanization" portrays the Chicago black scene. "Jimmy Slyde, Lon Chaney, Buster Brown, Honi Coles, Gregory Hines . Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk is a musical that debuted Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1995 and moved to Broadway in 1996. Mr. Glover, in a natty ragtime-style jacket, taps out clickety-clack train sounds. Bring in 'Da Noise Bring in 'Da Funk. How that tap "beat" might have been born in slave days, how it merged with mainstream culture and then got submerged in it (through segregated stage shows and Hollywood's casual racism), how the beat languished in inner cities like Harlem and was found again in Mr. Glover's generation -- this is the story of the show. The show was conceived and directed by George C. Wolfe, and featured music by Daryl Waters, Zane Mark and Ann Duquesnay; lyrics by Reg E. Gaines, George C. Wolfe and Ann Duquesnay; and a book by Reg E. Gaines. Waters, Mark, and Ann Duquesnay's musical, "Bring in 'Da Funk, Bring in 'Da Noise," was performed at the Ambassador Theatre on Broadway in New York City with Savion Glover, Ann Duquesnay, and Jeffrey Wright in the cast. He sent Mr. Gaines to a corner to write a slew of poems evoking African-American life in the different decades. Stream ad-free or purchase CD's and MP3s now on Amazon.com. ", In the midst of this, the dancing took shape. THEATER;'Bring in da Noise' Steps Uptown, Feet First. Mr. Wright, the Everyman narrator, comes on in his country suit and says his piece about the crickets down South he has heard all his life -- maybe they sound like the trolley tracks up North, in Chicago. Mr. Hernandez's towering industrial structure, made of pipes and chains, looms on the dark stage. "Zane was playing ocean music he made up. (1943) and the mean and gritty "West Side Story" (1957) all offered movement new-minted from real life. "It happened in a studio, getting ready to go to Paris with the show 'Black and Blue,' " he recalled with something like awe. "We discovered that black culture is not well documented," Ms. Silvestri said drily. Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk is a musical that debuted Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1995 and moved to Broadway in 1996. From this idea blossomed a vibrant, creative exploration of the beat and soul of black history through tap. "It was dark," recalled Ms. Duquesnay. Barely suppressed vitality is palpable in the darkened Ambassador Theater. "They were tapping and drumming all the time.". Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk is a musical that debuted Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1995 and moved to Broadway in 1996. Gift of the designer. In Savion Glover. "I ha' been doing what I learned in dance class. George C. Wolfe was director. WHEN MS. DUQUESNAY sings to Mr. Glover's tapping, as in that gospel-flavored moment toward the end of the show, a special intimacy is evoked; when Jeffrey Wright joins them and speaks (he has replaced Mr. Gaines on Broadway), it is a jazz version of a family dialogue. In 1995 Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk opened Off-Broadway. He wants "Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk" to "show people, ignorant of the art, how many things tap can express -- happiness, sadness, laboring, fun, anger, reality.". "I want everybody, all my friends," Mr. Crawford recalled Mr. Glover saying when "Bring in da Noise" was proposed. It is a laborious process, with spurts of performing interrupted by long pauses. MORE INDEX CARDS went up on the board as more numbers sprouted. "We had to wear earphones," said one of the stage managers, Gwen Gilliam. Mr. Wolfe, holding that paper, walked into a hall and saw Baakari Wilder, "with his long arms and his ancient face." It's about that American phenomenon of figuring out who you are in a new place. Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk (Reprise) Production was first made in 1995 in the Public Theater in New York in the frames of Shakespeare’s Festival, and a year later, it was staged on Broadway. " Mr. Wolfe would shout every morning, Ms. Duquesnay remembered, laughing. Mr. Glover grew up fatherless in Newark (though he had what Gregory Hines calls "a very wise mother"). "Thank you, that's lovely, gentlemen; can we have silence?" . Mr. Wolfe, who had not thought much about tap until then, suddenly saw it, he realized, as "a powerful folk tradition." ("When we old tappers get together, we talk about women -- and Savion," said Gregory Hines.) This groundbreaking musical began not with a script but with George Wolfe’s idea of Savion Glover as a living repository of rhythm. As the show came together, the lone female in the cast, the green-eyed Ms. Duquesnay, she of the "ripe rich voice and the sexy purple gown" (in the words of the Los Angeles Times), turned into its oracle, witness, girlfriend, maid, mother and goddess. The melody for the slave ships just came to me. -In Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk has an episodic organization of scenes related to a theme rather than a traditional plot made up of connected incidents Jonathan Larson merge the tradition of the musical theatre with music of the 1990s and the sensibility of young people raised with MTV, film technology, and rapidly changing social values That is the impulse -- revitalizing the stage with the dance "speech" of today -- behind "Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk," the acclaimed musical, also conceived at the Public Theater, that has moved uptown to the Ambassador Theater on Broadway, where it opens on Thursday. During the pauses, young cast members pop up like Mexican jumping beans.