Gregory hines biography actor chill

Gregory Hines, probably the most famous and beloved tap dancer in the final decades of the twentieth century, performed at Jacob’s Pillow only once, for a gala in 1996. But that performance was special, and in ways that reveal much about his singular gifts.

Alone among the hoofers of his generation, Hines was a star on Broadway and in the movies, too. Alongside his older brother, Maurice, he had grown up as a child entertainer in 1960s, learning how to tap—and how to entertain—the old-fashioned way, by watching older performers from the wings and getting coached backstage or in the alley behind the theater. The Hines Brothers played the Catskills, Las Vegas, and Miami, mixing in more singing and comedy as tap went out of style.

At 27, Gregory rebelled, dropping out for the beach lifestyle of Southern California. But when he returned to tap and New York in 1978, he connected with a broad public as no tap dancer had for decades. In the Broadway shows

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Gregory Hines

BIO

Gregory Hines was a jazz tap dancer, singer, actor, musician and choreographer as well as an avid improviser of tap steps, tap sounds, and tap rhythms alike. His improvisation was like that of a drummer, doing a solo and coming up with rhythms. He also improvised the phrasing of a number of tap steps, mainly based on sound produced.

Hines made his Broadway debut with his brother in The Girl in Pink Tights in 1954. He earned Tony Award nominations for Eubie! (1979), Comin' Uptown (1980), and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Jelly's gods Jam (1992) and the Theatre World Award for Eubie!. Hines co-hosted the Tony Awards ceremony in 1995 and 2002.

In 1981, Hines made his movie debut in Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part I. He had a large role in The Cotton Club (1984), where he and his brother Maurice (in Maurice's sole film credit) played a 1930s tap-dancing duo reminiscerande of the Nicholas Br

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Gregory Hines, 57; Tap Dancer, Actor

Gregory Hines, the innovative and influential tap dance star who became invaluable in the renewal of his art and also enjoyed wide success as a film and television actor, has died. He was 57.

Master of a distinctively earthy, roughhewn tap style, the Tony and Daytime Emmy award-winning performer died Saturday in Los Angeles of cancer.

Although he lent his choreographic talents to the emergence of tap as a concert-dance form, Hines arguably achieved his greatest importance as the bridge between the nightclub-tap tradition of his mentors (most of them known primarily to tap insiders) and the kind of multimedia stardom that no African American tapper had enjoyed since Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in the 1930s.

A monument to Hines’ personal tap style -- which he once defined as trying “to make it as real as possible, as natural as possible” -- the 1989 film “Tap” encompasses the whole range of tap achievement. It casts him as a rebel who explores ta