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Copasetics
The Original Copasetics were an ensemble of star tap dancers formed in 1949 on the death of Bill Bojangles Robinson that helped to revive the art of tap. The first group included composer/arranger Billy Strayhorn and the choreographer Cholly Atkins, as well as Honi Coles, Charles “Cookie” Cook and his dance partner Ernest “Brownie” Brown. by , August 25, 2009 Other dancers included Chuck Green
Charles Green (November 6, 1919 – March 7, 1997) was an American tap dancer. Green was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia. He would sti ...
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Charles “Cookie” Cook
Charles “Cookie” Cook (February 11, 1914 – August, 1991) was a tap dancer who performed in the heyday of tap through the 1980s, and was a founding member of the Copasetics. He was the dance partner of Ernest “Brownie” Brown, with whom he performed from the days of vaudeville into the 1960s. They performed in film, such as Dorothy Dandridge 1942 “soundie” ''Cow Cow Boogie'', on Broadway in the 1948 musical '' Kiss Me, Kate'', twice at the Newport Jazz Festival, as well in other acts, including “Garbage and His Two Cans” in which they played the garbage cans. He headlined venues including New York's Palace, the Apollo, Radio City Music Hall, Cotton Club, and London Palladium.Constance Valis Hill, “Charles ‘Cookie’ Cook iography” Tap Dance in America: A Twentieth-Century Chronology of Tap Performance on Stage, Film, and Media, Library of Congress, accessed May 4, 2022, http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.58/default.html. Quoted as saying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest “Brownie” Brown
Ernest "Brownie" Brown (April 25, 1916 – August 21, 2009) was an African American tap dancer and last surviving member of the Original Copasetics. He was the dance partner of Charles "Cookie" Cook, with whom he performed from the days of vaudeville into the 1960s, and of Reginald McLaughlin, also known as "Reggio the Hoofer," from 1996 until Brown's death in 2009. Early life Ernest Brown was born on April 25, 1916, in Chicago, Illinois, where he professionally danced as a child.Hill, Constance Vallis. “Ernest ‘Brownie’ Brown.” American Memory: Remaining Collections. Library of Congress Performing Arts Databases. http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.31/default.html Career Early career At age thirteen, Brown met his longtime dance partner Charles “Cookie” Cook, with whom he performed until the 1960s. They performed in acts such as Garbage And His Two Cans, in which they played the garbage cans, and Sarah Venable's Mammy And Her Picks. They travele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honi Coles
Charles “Honi” Coles (April 2, 1911 – November 12, 1992) was an American actor and tap dancer, who was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003. He had a distinctive personal style that required technical precision, high-speed tapping, and a close-to-the-floor style where "the legs and feet did the work". Coles was also half of the professional tap dancing duo Coles and Atkins, whose specialty was performing with elegant style through various tap steps such as "swing dance", "over the top", "bebop", "buck and wing", and "slow drag". He appeared in the films ''The Cotton Club (film), The Cotton Club'' and ''Dirty Dancing'', as well as the documentary '' Great Feats of Feet''.Hill, Valis Constance. “Charles "Honi" Coles [biography].” In Tap Dance in America: A Twentieth-Century Chronology of Tap Performance on Stage, Film, and Media, Library of Congress, accessed May 4, 2022, https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.43/default.html ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard Sims
Howard "Sandman" Sims (January 24, 1917 – May 20, 2003) was an African-American tap dancer who began his career in vaudeville. He was skilled in a style of dancing that he performed in a wooden sandbox of his own construction, and acquired his nickname from the sand he sprinkled to alter and amplify the sound of his dance steps. "They called the board my Stradivarius," Sims said of his sandbox. From the 1950s to the year 2000, Sims was a regular attraction—a "fixture"—at Harlem's noted Apollo Theater, comedically ushering failed acts offstage with a hook, broom or other prop. He was also involved in New York City's Hoofers Club, a venue primarily for black tap dancers. As part of the resurgence of interest in tap dancing in the 1980s, Sandman Sims served as a cultural ambassador, representing the United States with dance performances around the world. He was featured in the 1989 dance film '' Tap'', along with Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Hines and Savion Glover, demonstrati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, who collaborated with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington for nearly three decades. His compositions include "Take the 'A' Train", "Chelsea Bridge", "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing", and " Lush Life". Early life Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio, United States. His family soon moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother's family came from Hillsborough, North Carolina, and she sent him there to protect him from his father's drunken sprees. Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents' house in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player. Return to Pittsburgh and meeting Ellington S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chuck Green
Charles Green (November 6, 1919 – March 7, 1997) was an American tap dancer. Green was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia. He would stick bottle caps on his bare feet as a child and tap dance on the sidewalk for money. He won third place in a dance contest in 1925 in which Noble Sissle was the bandleader. Soon, Green would be touring the South tap dancing. When he was nine he was brought to New York by a talent scout to study tap dancing. A famous talent agent, Nat Nazzaro, signed Green up as a client when he was just twelve years old. He and his childhood friend James Walker teamed up and called themselves "Shorty and Slim". Walker was a talented comic dancer and would be "Slim" to Green's "Shorty". They changed their name to "Chuck and Chuckles," and played New York's Palace Theatre. Described as a modern Buck and Bubbles, Chuckles, an expert ilegomania played the vibes, while Green performed tap in a breathtaking yet gentle style of John Bubbles, whose protoge' he later became. U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tap Dance
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely performed in musical theater. Rhythm tap focuses on musicality, and practitioners consider themselves to be a part of the jazz tradition. The sound is made by shoes that have a metal "tap" on the heel and toe. There are different brands of shoes which sometimes differ in the way they sound. Ok History The fusion of several ethnic percussive dances, such as West African step dances and Welsh, Irish, and Scottish clog dancing, hornpipes, and jigs, tap dance is believed to have begun in the mid-1800s during the rise of minstrel shows. As minstrel shows began to decline in popularity, tap dance moved to the increasingly popular Vaudeville stage. Due to Vaudeville's unspoken "two-colored rule", which forbade blacks to perform solo, many Vaudevi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Robinson
Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging," adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence." His signature routine was the stair dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word ''copacetic'' throug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cholly Atkins
Charles "Cholly" Atkins (born Charles Sylvan Atkinson; September 13, 1913 – April 19, 2003) was an American dancer and vaudeville performer, who later became noted as the house choreographer for the various artists on the Motown label. Biography Born in Pratt City, Alabama, Cholly Atkins began dancing in the late 1930s before entering military service in 1942 during World War II. Upon leaving the U.S. Army. Atkins first found fame as one-half of Atkins & Coles, a top vaudeville dance act with partner Charles "Honi" Coles, debuting at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. Atkins and Coles toured extensively nationally and internationally, performing in showcases with major jazz and swing bands, including those led by Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and Lionel Hampton. The pair also performed from 1949 to 1952 on Broadway in the stage 4 production, '' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.'' In the mid-1950s, Cholly began teaching dance steps to the Cadill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jennifer Dunning
Jennifer Dunning (born February 4, 1942) is a writer and critic for ''The New York Times'' on the subjects of dance and ballet. She is the author of the 1985 ''But First a School: The First Fifty Years of the School of American Ballet'', the 1996 ''Alvin Ailey, a Life in Dance'', and the 1997 ''Great Performances: A Celebration''. Dunning was born in New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ... and studied dance. In 1977 she became the ballet critic for ''The New York Times''. She retired from the paper in 2008. References * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunning, Jennifer 1942 births Living people American dance critics Critics employed by The New York Times Bessie Award winners American women journalists American women critics 21st-century American women ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Slyde
James Titus Godbolt (October 2, 1927 – May 16, 2008), known professionally as Jimmy Slyde and also as the "King of Slides", was an American tap dancer known for his innovative tap style mixed with jazz. Slyde was a popular rhythm tap dancer in America in the mid-20th century, when he performed on the nightclub and burlesque circuits. He was also popular in Europe and lived in Paris for a brief period of his life. Slyde appeared in several musicals and shows in the 1980s, and he received numerous awards for his talent. He was known for his signature move, the slide. Early life Godbolt was born in Atlanta and moved to Boston at the age of three. As a child, his mother encouraged him to play the violin, and he enrolled at the Boston Conservatory of Music to advance as a violinist. However, the Conservatory was across the street from Stanley Brown's dance studio, which he would visit to watch great tap dancers such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, John W. Bubbles, Charles "Honi" Col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
