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Tap City
Tap City, the New York City Tap Festival, was launched in 2001 in New York City. Held annually for approximately one week each summer, the festival features tap dancing classes, choreography residencies, panels, screenings, and performances as well as awards ceremonies, concert performances, and Tap it Out, a free, public, outdoor event performed in Times Square by a chorus of dancers. The goal of the Festival is to establish a "higher level of understanding and examination of tap’s storied history and development.” History Tap City was designed to bring attention to New York City’s tap community. Its first iteration was held from July 7 through July 15, 2001, at various studios and performance spaces around Manhattan. Chaired by Hoagy Carmichael Jr., and Gregory Hines, the Festival began with an open jam session at the Broadway Dance Center in midtown Manhattan. Over the ensuing eight days, an international roster of over 90 performers appeared, which according to the ''Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Waag
Tony Carl Waag (born September 8, 1957) is a tap dancer, director and producer living in New York City. In 2008, he was dubbed "The Mayor of Tap City" by TheaterMania. He is currently the Executive/Artistic Director of the American Tap Dance Foundation. Early life/education Tony Carl Waag was born in Fort Collins, Colorado on September 8, 1957. While growing up, he watched old MGM Hollywood musicals and developed an interest in performing. By high school, he had joined the Storm Mountain Folk Dancers, a local group devoted to the “authentic recreation of regional dance styles, costumes and music.” After graduating high school in 1976, Waag continued his education across the street at Colorado State University. At first, he majored in Art/Sculpture. During his freshman year, however, he attended a tap workshop led by Brenda Bufalino, Charles “Cookie” Cook and Leslie “Bubba” Gaines. That summer, his network expanded further when he met Charles "Honi" Coles when Honi wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeni Le Gon
Jeni LeGon (born Jennie Ligon; August 14, 1916 – December 7, 2012), also credited as Jeni Le Gon, was an American dancer, dance instructor, and actress. She was one of the first African-American women to establish a solo career in tap dance. Early years Born as Jennie Ligon in Chicago, Illinois, her parents were Hector Ligon, a chef who also worked as a railway porter, and Harriet Bell Ligon, a housewife. She grew up in the Black Belt area of Chicago and finished Sexton Elementary School in 1928. When she was 13, she successfully auditioned for the chorus line of band leader Count Basie. She attended Englewood High School for one year thereafter. Career In 1931, LeGon began performing across the southern United States with the Whitman Sisters company. In 1933, she and her half-sister, Willa Mae Lane, formed the LeGon and Lane song-and-dance team. They were given the opportunity to go to Detroit and work with nightclub owner Leonard Reed. While there, they received a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Brown (dancer)
Eddie Brown (1918–1992) was an American tap dancer. Origin When Eddie Brown was 16, he entered a talent contest in his hometown when he was sixteen years old. He won first place and was discovered by famous American entertainer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who offered him a job in New York. Brown’s parents would not allow him to travel across the country to dance because he was still in school, however Brown went to New York anyway. Since Brown was still underage, he lived on the money that he made from dancing on the streets until he turned 18, when he joined Robinson’s show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.Frank, R.E. (1990) Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories 1900-1955. William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York. Career Brown danced professionally throughout the 1930s and 1940s as part of a trio with Carl Gibson and Jerry Reed, as well as being a solo dancer in nightclubs, and with swing and jazz musicians such as Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, and D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bunny Briggs
Bunny Briggs (February 26, 1922 – November 15, 2014) was an American tap dancer who was inducted into the American Tap Dancing Hall of Fame in 2006. Briggs was born under the name Bernard Briggs in Harlem, New York on February 26, 1922. When asked about his nickname Briggs said "Well, I'm fast." At one point he thought about becoming a Catholic priest but his priest told Briggs that "God clearly wanted him to be a dancer." In the 1960s, Briggs was known to dance with the likes of bandleaders Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington, so much so that Briggs was deemed "Duke's dancer." In May 1985 Briggs performed on the NBC TV Special, "Motown Returns to the Apollo." He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1989 for his work in the Broadway show ''Black and Blue''. He appeared on stage and in movies including the Gregory Hines film ''Tap'' in 1989. In 2002, Briggs received an honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts in American Dance by Oklahoma City University in 2002, honoring him as one of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sammy Davis Jr
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director. At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally, and his film career began in 1933. After military service, Davis returned to the trio and became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities.Sammy Davis Jr. Biography Biography.com. Retrieved June 6, 2013.< ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peg Leg Bates
Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates (October 11, 1907 – December 6, 1998) was an African-American entertainer from Fountain Inn, South Carolina, United States. Life and career Early life Peg Leg Bates was born Clayton Bates on October 10, 1907 in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, the son of Rufus and Emma W Stewart Bates. His mother was a sharecropper. By the age of five, Bates was dancing on the streets of Fountain Inn for pennies and nickels; he lost a leg at the age of 12 in a cotton gin accident. His uncle, Wit, made his crude first "peg leg" after returning home from World War I and finding his nephew handicapped. Bates subsequently taught himself to tap dance with a wooden peg leg. By the time he was 15, Bates was again adept enough at dancing to enter amateur talent shows, working his way up to employment through the Theater Owners Booking Association, which booked entertainers for African-American theaters in the US. Career At 20, Bates was dancing on Broadway. In the early 1940 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald O'Connor
Donald David Dixon Ronald O'Connor (August 28, 1925 – September 27, 2003) was an American dancer, singer and actor. He came to fame in a series of films in which he co-starred with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule. His best-known works came in the film ''Singin' in the Rain'' (1952), for which O'Connor was awarded a Golden Globe. He also won a Primetime Emmy Award from four nominations and received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Early years Though he considered Danville, Illinois, to be his hometown, O'Connor was the 200th child born in St. Elizabeth Hospital in Chicago. Often, both of his parents struggled to remember where and when exactly O'Connor was born, due to the family's extensive travel as a Vaudeville team. Indeed, his parents, Effie Irene (née Crane) and John Edward "Chuck" O'Connor, were vaudeville entertainers; she was a bareback rider and he was a circus strongman and acrobat. His father's family was from Ireland. O'Connor later s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Miller
Ann Miller (born Johnnie Lucille Collier; April 12, 1923 – January 22, 2004) was an American retired actress and former dancer. She is best remembered for her work in the Classical Hollywood cinema musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. Her early work included roles in Frank Capra's '' You Can't Take It with You'' (1938) and the Marx Bros. film ''Room Service'' (1938). She later starred in the movie musical classics Charles Walters' '' Easter Parade'' (1948), Stanley Donen's '' On the Town'' (1949) and George Sidney's ''Kiss Me Kate'' (1953). Her final film role was in David Lynch's ''Mulholland Drive'' (2001). In 1960, Miller received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2017, ''The Daily Telegraph'' named her one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. Early life Johnnie Lucille Collier (other sources give other birthnames, such as Lucille Collier and Lucy Ann Collier) was born in Chireno, Texas, to Clara Emma (née Birdwell) and John Alfred ... [...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] |
Charles 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'' and '' Dirty Dancing'', as well as the documentary '' Great Feats of Feet''.Hill, Valis Constance. “Charles "Honi" Coles iography” 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 Coles was also a tap-dan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Brothers
The Nicholas Brothers were an entertainment act composed of biological brothers, Fayard Nicholas, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold Nicholas, Harold (1921–2000), who excelled in a variety of dance techniques, primarily between the 1930s and 1950s. Best known for their unique interpretation of a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing", they were also considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day, if not all time. Their virtuoso performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" (with Cab Calloway and his orchestra) featured in the 1943 movie ''Stormy Weather (1943 film), Stormy Weather'' has been praised as one of the greatest dance routines ever captured on film. Growing up surrounded by vaudeville acts as children, they became stars of the jazz circuit during the Harlem Renaissance and performed on stage, film, and television well into the 1990s. Diminutive in size, they were appreciated for their artistry, innovation, and soaring leaps. Ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Condos
Steve Condos (October 12, 1918 in Pittsburgh, PASeptember 16, 1990 in Lyon) was an American tap dancer. He was a member of the Condos Brothers, with siblings Nick and Frank. The Condos Brothers are credited in the film '' Wake Up and Live'' (1937), in which two of the brothers are introduced by orchestra leader Ben Bernie and dance two tap routines, but the brothers are not further identified. They were also credited in the film '' Moon Over Miami'' (1941), as specialties. He danced in the films '' Song of the Open Road'' (1944), '' Meet Me After the Show'' (1951), '' Tap'' (1989), and numerous others. He collaborated with Jimmy Slyde on a program of jazz tap improvisation at the Smithsonian Institution during the 1980s. He died at 71 of a heart attack, in Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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