Cyrus Brooks: Boston's very own hoofer-tapper hits hard as dancer and choreographer.

Cyrus Akeem Brooks was 12 years old When Savion Glover came to Boston's Wang Theatre with the touring company of Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. The starstruck kid, carrying his tap shoes, convinced the security guard at the stage door that he was an understudy for the cast "I stood in the wings and saw Savion, all sweaty and hot, just as he was coming offstage. Savion asked me, 'Kid, how did you get in?' When I told him, he just died laughing. He told me. "Keep dancing,' and signed my tap shoes," Brooks recalls,

Keep dancing, indeed, except that Brooks needs no outside prodding. Possessed of an over-sized stage presence, Brooks stands only 5' 7", with a turned-up nose and doll-like features, topped by a corn-row hairdo and a single diamond in his left ear. Tap is his home base, with hip hop, jazz, modern, and even some ballet moves sliding into his combinations.

Now 18, a high school graduate as of this month, and one of the most proficient tappers in Boston. he's added choreography to his skill-set, combining every form of dance he's learned. One mentor, Khalid Hill, a former member of the Noise/Funk national company, calls him "Renaissance man."

Brooks, who is passionate and charismatic onstage, is a self-described "hoofer-tapper." He engages his entire body in the movement. "When I'm choreographing or dancing I think about the music, the rhythm and the beats. I'll actually see the steps and know where they're going before I hear the rhythm." He not only focuses on the sounds from his shoes, he also wants to engage his audience. "What I do is find a happy medium between being a dancer and a technician," Brooks says.

Last fall Brooks led a group of young tappers from Boston in the Overture Productions concert version of On the Twentieth Century, the 1978 musical by Cy Coleman, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. As both performer and choreographer, he drew raves from the critics for creating a recurring movement motif that echoed the click-click-clack sounds and patterns of the trans-continental train. Tony McLean, director of Twentieth Century, says, "I gave Cyrus the CD of the musical and the script. Two months later he showed me what he did and I was floored. It was like working with a professional from New York--and he was only 17!"

Brooks started performing at age 2 with his mother, Janice Allen, a music educator and singer who uses folk songs, instruments, children's circle games, and gospel music to teach African American culture. As a child, Allen studied dance and music at the Elma Lewis School in Roxbury and tap with Stanley Brown, which connects her son directly into the rich Boston lineage of African American artists and tappers, including Jimmy Slyde, Dianne Walker, and the late Leon Collins. Other early influences for Brooks were dance films like Tap (starring Gregory Hines and Savion Glover), and television episodes of The Cosby Show. At age 4, he was trying on Hill's large tap shoes backstage. By 7 he had started his first formal dance training--African dance with DeAma Battle, then tap with Hill, and hip hop with a trio of teachers: Tron of The FloorLords, a Boston-based, world-traveling troupe; Reia Briggs-Connor from Phunk Phenomenon Dance Studio; and another mentor, Ricardo Foster.

Hill says that as a tapper Brooks makes an impression with the rhythm. "His style is aggressive. He likes to hit hard, to reach for a unique rhythm. He tries to be creative. He doesn't like the average-Joe kind of step."

According to Anthony Williams, a former member of the Joffrey Ballet and Boston Ballet and founder of the Jamaica Plain School of Dance (now Tony Williams Dance Center), the hoofer can even hold his own in ballet. "Although he doesn't have the body or the feet for it, his attack and concentration are enormous." Williams cast Brooks for three years in Urban Nutcracker, in the hip hop-urban-tap street scene, the tap dancing orphans segment, and the Russian dance. Brooks also performed featured roles in the national touring company of Finian's Rainbow (1999) and Moby Dick: An American Opera at New Repertory Theater (2001). Rick Lombardo, director of Moby Dick, says, "We called him Mr. Showbusiness. He was a 40-year-old kid."

Ahead for Brooks is the continuation of his dancing, choreography, and teaching. "I'll be teaching for the rest of my life," he vows. He also gives lecture-demonstrations on tap: Yale, Harvard, and the Berklee School of Music are among his venues. "I will continue tapping. I'll continue street performing as long as my body allows it and hopefully produce an all hip hop and tap revue." He'll spend the summer making a demo tape, trying to find an agent, and performing with his group The Old Skool Dropouts. They join The New York City Transformers Break Team when it travels to Boston. He hopes to enter college in January 2007.

"I want to be a household name," he says. "I live by the saying, 'You're not going to be part of everything great in life, but as long as you keep striving towards excellence, you will be part of something great.'"

Iris Fanger is a Boston-based dance and theater writer.