There are moments in artistic history when a single work doesn’t just capture the zeitgeist—it detonates it. When Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk premiered off-Broadway in 1995 and exploded onto Broadway in 1996, it didn’t just revive tap dancing. It fundamentally redefined what tap could be, who it could speak for, and what stories it could tell.
For those of us in the tap dance community (I share my own work as a tap dancer and educator here.), the show represents a before-and-after dividing line. Before Noise/Funk, tap was fighting for mainstream relevance, often relegated to nostalgic variety shows or old movie clips. After Noise/Funk, tap was undeniably contemporary, unapologetically Black, and recognized as a serious theatrical art form capable of carrying epic narratives.
Nearly thirty years later, the show’s influence still reverberates through every rhythm tap class, every improvised solo, every tap dancer who approaches their craft as storytelling rather than showmanship. This is the story of how one Broadway production changed tap dance forever—and why it still matters today.
Tap Dancing in the Mid-90s: An Art Form in Limbo
To understand what Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk accomplished, you need to understand where tap stood in the early 1990s.
The art form had never truly died, despite what cultural narratives sometimes suggested. The masters were still teaching, still performing, still mentoring the next generation. Gregory Hines had brought tap back into popular consciousness with his film work throughout the 1980s and early 90s. Tap jams were happening in studios across the country. The craft was breathing, evolving, surviving.
But mainstream visibility? That was a different story. It’s one of the reasons I eventually created eTapDance.com so adults and kids could have a convenient way to learn how to tap online.
Tap wasn’t on magazine covers. It wasn’t driving ticket sales. Broadway had largely moved on to other dance forms. When people thought of dance in popular culture, they thought of ballet, modern, or the jazz-funk hybrids dominating music videos. Tap felt like something your grandmother loved—a relic of the golden age of Hollywood, preserved but not particularly relevant to contemporary conversations about art, identity, or culture.
The tap community knew better, of course. Those of us who loved the form understood its depth, its musicality, its improvisational brilliance. But we also understood that tap needed something seismic to break through to a wider audience—something that would make the world stop and pay attention.
That seismic event arrived in the form of a young dancer from Newark, New Jersey.
Enter Savion Glover: The Rhythmic Revolutionary
Savion Glover didn’t just dance rhythms. He seemed to channel them from some deeper source, generating percussive complexity with a weight and clarity that felt almost supernatural. Where many tap dancers aimed for speed and flash, Savion dug into the floor. His sound had gravity. His rhythms had architecture.
By the mid-90s, Savion was already a known quantity in tap circles. He’d been tapping since childhood, mentored by legends like Gregory Hines and Lon Chaney. He’d performed on Broadway in The Tap Dance Kid and Black and Blue. Those who’d seen him knew they were witnessing something special—a generational talent who was pushing the boundaries of what tap could express.
But Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk gave Savion something unprecedented: a massive platform and complete choreographic freedom to reimagine tap as a vehicle for storytelling on the grandest theatrical scale.
The creative team assembled for the project reads like a dream collaboration. George C. Wolfe, the visionary director already known for his work exploring African-American identity through theatre, brought his conceptual brilliance and theatrical instincts. Reg E. Gaines contributed spoken-word poetry that crackled with urgency and historical weight. The musicians created soundscapes that ranged from field hollers to funk, providing the sonic foundation for tap to tell stories that had never been told quite this way before.
Together, they created something that had never existed: a full-evening theatrical work that used tap dancing as the primary storytelling vehicle to trace African-American history from slavery through the Great Migration, from street corners to modern urban life.
What Made Noise/Funk Different
If you’d walked into a Broadway theatre in 1996 expecting a traditional tap show—dancers in matching outfits tapping in unison, big smiles, clean lines, jazz hands—you would have been shocked by what Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk delivered.
This wasn’t tap as decoration or interlude. This was tap as the main event, tap as narrator, tap as memory keeper. The show opened with the sound of chains, transitioned into the rhythms of slavery and survival, moved through minstrelsy and its complicated legacy, celebrated the joy and innovation of jazz-era Harlem, and eventually arrived at contemporary urban experience with all its complexity.
The choreography didn’t ask dancers to smile through difficult material or soften the edges of painful history. Instead, it leaned into the weight of that history. Savion’s movement vocabulary emphasized groundedness, attack, and percussive power. Dancers hit the floor with intention. Every stomp carried meaning. Every rhythm pattern was a choice, a statement, a reclamation.
The staging amplified the tapping itself, treating it not as accompaniment to music but as music. Microphones picked up every sound. The theatre became a drum. The dancers’ feet became the primary instruments, and the audience couldn’t look away—or stop listening.
For tap dancers watching this unfold, it was revolutionary. Here was tap freed from the constraints of traditional Broadway choreography. Here was tap that didn’t need to apologize for its Blackness or its cultural roots. Here was tap that could be angry, joyful, mournful, celebratory, political, personal—all in the same evening.
And for audiences who had never seen rhythm tap performed at this level, it was a revelation. Many walked out of the theatre understanding for the first time that tap dancing was a serious art form with depth, complexity, and something urgent to say about American history and identity.
The Cast That Brought It to Life
While Savion Glover originated the lead role and became the face of the production, Noise/Funk succeeded because of its ensemble of extraordinary rhythm tap dancers. These weren’t just skilled technicians executing choreography—they were artists who understood the assignment, who brought their own rhythmic voices to the work, who could improvise within the structure and make each performance feel alive and immediate.
The original cast included Vincent Bingham, Dulé Hill (yes, the actor who later starred in The West Wing and Psych started as a tap dancer), Raymond King, Baakari Wilder, and others who represented the depth of talent in the rhythm tap community. Each brought their own style, their own attack, their own way of interpreting Savion’s choreography.
Equally crucial to the production’s success was Ann Duquesnay, who served as ‘da Singer and won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance. Director George C. Wolfe specifically sought a woman with powerful presence, and Ann delivered that in abundance—not just through her extraordinary voice but through the emotional depth she brought to the material. As both performer and one of the show’s composers, she helped shape the sonic landscape that gave the tap dancing its context and power. Her contribution reminds us that while Noise/Funk was revolutionary for its tap choreography, it succeeded as total theatre, with every element working in concert.
This diversity of approach was crucial to the show’s success. Unlike traditional Broadway productions where uniformity is prized, Noise/Funk celebrated individual rhythmic voices. The choreography had structure, but it also had space for personal expression, for moments where dancers could insert their own rhythms, their own improvisations, their own interpretations of the emotional material.
This meant that different dancers in the lead role brought radically different energies to the same choreography. Some approached it with meditative intensity, making every sound feel carefully chosen and weighted with meaning. Others brought explosive joy and athletic power, making the stage feel like it might not contain all that energy. Both approaches worked because the show’s structure could hold them.
How the Show Changed Tap’s Cultural Position
The immediate impact of Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk was obvious. The show won four Tony Awards, including Best Choreography for Savion Glover. It ran for over 1,100 performances on Broadway. It toured nationally, bringing rhythm tap to audiences across the country who might never have seen it otherwise.
But the deeper, more lasting impact took longer to fully understand.
First, the show repositioned tap as a serious contemporary art form rather than nostalgic entertainment. Critics who might have dismissed tap as old-fashioned had to reckon with what they saw on that stage. This was undeniably modern, undeniably relevant, undeniably powerful. Suddenly tap was part of conversations about American theatre, about race and representation, about what dance could accomplish as storytelling.
Second, it centered Black rhythmic expression in a way that mainstream American theatre had rarely done before. Tap dancing is a Black American art form, born from the collision and fusion of African rhythmic traditions with European step dancing, shaped by generations of Black dancers who innovated in the face of enormous obstacles. Noise/Funk honored that lineage unapologetically. It didn’t soften the history or make it palatable for white audiences. It told the truth through rhythm, and in doing so, it gave permission for future works to center Blackness without compromise.
Third, Savion’s choreographic vocabulary influenced virtually every tap dancer who came after. His emphasis on weight, on hitting through the floor rather than skimming across it, on complex polyrhythmic patterns, on using the entire body to generate sound—these became touchstones for a generation of rhythm tappers. If you take a rhythm tap class today, particularly from teachers who came of age in the late 90s or 2000s, you’re learning in the wake of what Savion demonstrated in Noise/Funk. I teach these same rhythm-based concepts in the eTap Training Program, where dancers can learn tap at home, at any level.
Fourth, the show demonstrated that tap could tell epic stories, could carry a full evening of theatre, could hold its own alongside any other dance form in terms of artistic ambition and achievement. This opened doors for future tap-centered works and gave tap choreographers permission to think bigger.
The Ripple Effects: What Came After
In the years following Noise/Funk, something shifted in the tap world. Suddenly there were more opportunities, more visibility, more recognition. Tap dancers who had been working in relative obscurity found new audiences. Studios that had been struggling to fill tap classes saw renewed interest.
Kids who saw the show—or saw Savion on talk shows, on the Tony Awards, in the media coverage that surrounded the production—decided they wanted to tap dance. Many of them are now professional tap dancers and teachers themselves, passing on what they learned to the next generation.
Adult dancers, too, were inspired to start or return to tap. If you’re an adult beginner (like I was in 1997), my online program at eTapDance.com is designed exactly for dancers who want to ease back in and grow at their own pace.
Something about the show’s emphasis on rhythm, on personal expression, on tap as a language rather than just a set of steps, resonated with people who might not have seen themselves in traditional Broadway-style tap. The show created cultural permission for people to approach tap on their own terms, to find their own rhythmic voice.
Many of today’s home tap dancers practice with portable tap floors like the ones I offer at PortableTapFloor.com.
The emphasis on improvisation and individual style that Noise/Funk celebrated became central to how rhythm tap is taught and practiced today. Tap jams, where dancers gather to trade rhythms and improvise, became more common and more valued. The idea that each dancer should develop their own sound, their own rhythmic vocabulary, became a core principle in rhythm tap education.
And perhaps most importantly, the show reminded the broader tap community of something they’d always known but that needed to be said loudly: tap dancing matters. It has something to say. It deserves to be taken seriously. It is contemporary, evolving, and vital.
Why Noise/Funk Still Resonates Today
Search interest in Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk hasn’t faded. Every few years, when tap resurfaces in popular culture—a viral video, a new Broadway production featuring tap, a documentary about tap history—people rediscover this show and want to know more about it.
Part of that lasting interest comes from the fact that the themes the show explored remain relevant. Questions about racial identity, about cultural memory, about how we tell stories about difficult histories—these haven’t gone away. The show’s approach to these questions through rhythm and movement still feels fresh, still feels necessary.
Part of it comes from the sheer artistry on display. Even watching grainy footage of performances decades later, you can feel the power of what those dancers were doing. The technical mastery combined with emotional depth and cultural specificity created something that transcends its moment.
And part of it comes from the show’s influence on everyone who came after. If you’re a tap dancer today, you’re dancing in a world that Noise/Funk helped shape. The opportunities that exist, the ways tap is taught and valued, the permission to approach tap as personal expression—all of that connects back to what this production accomplished.
The Legacy Lives On
Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk proved that tap dancing could carry weight, could tell truth, could make audiences lean forward in their seats and really listen. It centered Black rhythmic genius on one of the world’s most prestigious stages and refused to compromise or apologize.
For those of us who love tap, who teach tap, who spend our lives exploring what rhythm can express, this show remains a touchstone. It represents what’s possible when artistry, cultural specificity, and theatrical vision align. It showed us what tap can be when it’s given the space and support to be fully itself.
The show closed its Broadway run years ago, but its influence continues. Every time a tap dancer chooses to dig into the floor rather than skim across it, every time a choreographer treats tap as storytelling rather than decoration, every time someone discovers that tap dancing is alive and evolving and has something to say—that’s the legacy of Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk.
In the next post in this series, I’ll share my personal experience seeing this groundbreaking show live—twice, in the same week, with two completely different lead dancers. Those performances changed my understanding of what tap could be, and I can’t wait to tell you about them.
By the way, I now offer tap workshops, private tap lessons, and in-school assembly programs inspired by these great experiences.
