Heart-pounding foot-tapping

Genius in the theater is as rare as it is unmistakable -- and tap phenomenon Savion Glover lights the Kodak Theatre with it throughout his “Improvography” program, which opened Tuesday for a five-performance run.

You might have expected the sudden shifts in speed and style of attack that have made Glover the tap virtuoso of the age: the rhythmic patterns so complex that you’d need an extra set of fingers and toes to count them, the outpouring of energy so unstinting that you can guess at what it costs him only by watching his shirt get sweat-stained, inch by inch, down to the cuffs.

Glover doesn’t make tap look smooth and easy; he makes it look primal and liberating, and he draws his audience deep into what he feels -- especially in his transformation of jazz into a personal body language.

That’s what you don’t expect. That’s his genius: You see the music erupt in him, throw his limbs every which way, and the improvisational nature of the event means that he’s free to follow it anywhere. And take you along. No performer is more generous -- even when his back is turned -- and nobody makes a stronger case, moment by moment, for the power of art to change lives.

In his 17-minute opening solo, he begins by responding intimately to a solo by bass player Andy McCloud (the first musician on the stage), then grows more assertive when drummer Brian Grice arrives. As the music builds in layers with the entrances of pianist Tommy James and reed specialist Patience Higgins, Glover not only adds his own accompaniment and tap-commentary to the mix but becomes a kind of sonic anchor for the musicians’ increasingly daring free flight.

Sometimes, he stays in a groove, slamming out emphases, 1-2-3, intercut with a dazzling array of high-velocity embellishments. Sometimes he free-associates -- in the moment so completely that he seems to surprise himself when he ends up doing some sort of playful duck-walk or, later on the program, the kind of coltish jumps with heel-clicks that might be culled from memories of his first tap classes.

Suddenly, with a flourish or maybe just an impulsive jump off the dance platform at the center of the stage, it’s over. But not long enough for you to get your breath or fully process what you’ve just seen, because in a flash he’s singing Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight” into a hand mike that’s about the only technical component of “Improvography” that becomes a problem. The amplification may be excessive, but certainly Brenda Gray’s lighting design brings variety and focus to the performance, often heightening the gleam of Glover’s tap shoes to an unearthly radiance.

In much of Act 2, Glover dances alongside Maurice Chestnut, Ashley DeForest and Cartier Williams: collectively labeled Chapter IV. Their set features recorded music, with Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” perhaps the best known of the tracks.

Glover’s group choreography develops unison step combinations as themes, with formal variations and brief solos adding complexity while continual shifts in dancer lineups, including rotating cube-formations, place the steps in new spatial configurations. It’s all highly accomplished but remains in the realm of the possible. And on this program, that’s a step down.

The evening ends with Glover soloing to something he calls “Stars and Stripes Forever, for Now,” which finds Higgins taking uptight old John Philip Sousa to an Arabian oasis. Can a musical arrangement be political? This one can, suggesting that our national identity is now entangled with the Middle East.

Glover smiles when he hears it, but the solo is mostly an odyssey, re-teaming him with each individual in the band and sending him back in time to dance in the styles of tap pioneers. Sometimes he’s Mr. Flash, detonating rhythms while jogging in place or restlessly circling the stage or stabbing the floor with one toe and then balancing on it.

Then a big change: Arms loose and even motionless at his sides, feet generating a steady stream of steps, he suddenly becomes a vintage nightclub tap-dancer, not traveling much, not breaking the flow with anything especially flashy but keeping the art alive through indomitable persistence and proficiency.

And there’s more -- so much more -- because at 31 he’s a living tap archive, all the history and lore of it instantly on call in his mind and body, with just a step or two capable of evoking the image of someone he loved or learned from long ago.

It’s Jungian, it’s Joycean, it’s genius, it’s Glover: the long-awaited American dancer who fuses high and low, classical and popular, concert art and commercial entertainment in one incandescent performance.

You think that tap is only showing off? Learn your lesson through Saturday at the Kodak.

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Savion Glover’s ‘Improvography’

Where: Kodak Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. today and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $21 to $53.50

Info: (213) 480-3232 or www.ticketmaster.com