Tap superstar Savion Glover is back in town, and that’s cause for rejoicing. He conceived Bring In da Noise, Bring in da Funk in 1995 at New York’s Public Theater, where it was shaped further by director George C. Wolfe. The following year Noise/Funk moved to Broadway, where it garnered a full list of theatrical honors topped by Tony Awards for Wolfe and choreographer Glover.

Apart from Lynette DuPree (da Singer) and Dorchester native Thomas Silcott (da Voice), who are veterans of the Broadway production and the first national tour, Glover is leading a new generation to dance alongside him, including one woman and a most precocious child, Cartier A. Williams, a 12-year-old reminder of Glover in his prodigy days, when local impresario Jeremy Alliger was bringing him regularly to town. Although Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards is an engaging addition to the line-up, Glover’s unisex choreography makes no room for a statement on gender.

Now as then, the show is a series of short riffs on the history of the blacks in America. It’s all expressed through song, poetry, and the pounding of feet miked at the ankles to echo the anger that propels the narration; yet a large dose of humor amends the confrontational attitudes.

The scenery is little more than a sequence of images projected on the backdrop and embellished by various set pieces rolled in to help establish the succeeding milieux. It’s the ever-moving lighting design by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer that lifts the décor beyond the rudimentary. The lights paint prison bars at the side scrim to re-create the hold of a slave ship, later making a pattern of criss-crossing beacons, like spotlight beams on a studio sound stage, to indicate the black entertainers’ move to Hollywood. Glover is sly in his mockery of early black stars, the Nicholas Brothers of the elegant unison gestures and crotch-aching jump splits, and Bill " Bojangles " Robinson, refusing to excuse the times in which they lived or the way in which they acceded to white expectations that they shuffle and serve while they were dancing.

The show’s choreography mirrors the changes in the African-American condition, with Glover’s personal style serving as a recurrent motif. His favorite posture is slightly stooped over, long arms and dreadlocks dangling, while he lets his feet set the rhythm in both sound and movement. Calibrated to vibrate with every new thought or feeling, the feet become a symphony of parts that work in separate directions: the toes, the balls, the heels that punish the floor. The outside edges of the dancer’s steel-plated shoes skitter in contrast to the flat-footed stomp. It’s all an expression of Glover’s genius, his dedication to the art of tapping, and a continual homage to the teachers and mentors who influenced him. One of these, Jimmy Slyde, was seated in the audience at Tuesday night’s preview.

The new tappers are modeling their performances after Glover’s, just as he took what he needed from Slyde, Buster Brown, and Chuck Green of beloved memory, but the young ones will develop the moxie to write their own signatures. The two drummers, Jared ‘Choclatt’ Crawford and Raymond A. King, summon up the beat out of (1) a glut of pots and pans mounted on every part of their bodies and on a frame behind them and (2) their sticks and a quintet of white plastic tubs turned upside down. Narrator Silcott and vocalist DuPree transform their characters according to each new era, in sound and fury that matches the tapping.

If I had two wishes, I’d ask for a smaller theater than the Wang and a ticket for every young dancer in town. It’s not that Glover can’t fill the space with his presence — the problem with the Wang is the considerable divide between the audience and the folks on stage. As for the students: they need to see Glover in all his glory, as an example of what’s in store if they’re endowed with similar artistry and, like Glover, can summon up the spirit of the dance in their heels and toes.