Deixa-me rir

Caros Audiophiles, this week is less about the music and more about the rhythmic syncopation, elegant grace and astonishing athleticism of two dancing brothers who became famous in the 1930s and who influenced generations of star entertainers such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Sammy Davis Jr and Michael Jackson.

The Nicholas Brothers were self-taught dance innovators and teachers who developed a hybrid style of tap dance, ballet and acrobatics known as "flash dancing" or classical tap.

The actor and dancer Gregory Hines, who starred in the 1984 jazz-age film The Cotton Club, once remarked that if a biopic were to be made of the Nicholas Brothers, their dance routines would have to be computer-generated because nobody who ever lived would be able to imitate them. Ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them the most amazing dancers he had ever seen in his life.

The Encyclopedia Britannica guide to Black History describes them:

The Nicholas Brothers were a tap-dancing duo whose suppleness, strength, fearlessness and sensational showmanship made them one of the greatest tap dance acts of all time. Fayard and his brother Harold developed a type of dance that has been called "classical tap,” combining jazz dance, ballet, and dazzling acrobatics with tap dancing.

From the time older brother Fayard was an infant, his parents, who were professional musicians, brought him to the theatre for their practices and performances. There he gained an early education in show business by watching great black entertainers such as the jazz musician Louis Armstrong, and the dance teams Buck and Bubbles and the Berry Brothers. Fayard taught himself how to dance, sing, and perform by watching the entertainers on stage. He then taught his younger brother Harold.

Their first big break came in 1932, when they were hired to play at New York Harlem's famous Cotton Club alongside black show business legends such as the jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer Duke Ellington, and the bandleader and singer Cab Calloway. The youngsters were an instant sensation. Impeccably dressed, Harold and Fayard, now 11 and 18 years old (though promoted as much younger), dazzled every audience that walked through the doors of the notorious gangster-run nightclub. They were so well known and beloved in the community that they were the only African-American act of their time allowed to mix with white patrons.

The Nicholas Brothers were part of a small cadre of black dancers who appeared frequently in Hollywood films of the 1930s and '40s. Fayard and Harold spent their careers shifting between engagements in vaudeville, movies, nightclubs, concerts, Broadway, records, radio, television, and extensive worldwide tours. Because of their versatility—they could sing, act, and dance and thus were considered a “triple treat”—they headlined all over the world. Fayard Nicholas later said, “We did everything in show business except opera.” In 1937 the brothers so impressed the choreographer George Balanchine with their dancing that they were cast in his production of Rodgers and Hart's musical Babes in Arms.

During the 1940s the Nicholas Brothers continued to appear in films, including Down Argentine Way (1940). Because of the racial prejudice characteristic of the era, black performers never had major roles in mainstream feature films, and—unlike such tap dancers as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly—the Nicholas Brothers did not have the opportunity to try out their acting skills. Instead of leading men, they were presented as a "speciality act". Despite these racial restrictions, the brothers' brief film appearances brought them worldwide celebrity and gave them star billing wherever they traveled.

Their greatest crowning achievement - described by Fred Astaire as "the greatest movie musical sequence I have ever seen" - was the Jumpin' Jive dance routine preserved in the film Stormy Weather (1943), which had an all-black cast. In it the brothers, suited magnificently in white tie and black tails, dance on, over, and around the Cab Calloway Orchestra bandstands, dance side-by-side up a flight of stairs, leap onto a piano where they trade syncopated notes with the pianist, jump out onto the floor in full splits, dance up a divided stairway built of gigantic white stairs, meet at the top to exchange a few thrilling moves, and then leap into splits and slide down separate ramps, meeting once again on the dance floor to finish this dazzling routine with a crisp bow.

The Nicholas Brothers had begun their careers at a time when opportunities were few and stereotyped roles were normal for black actors and entertainers. To their credit, however, the Nicholas Brothers rose above this marginalization and, with a sense of dignity and a style all their own, became not only black cultural icons but also earned the respect of generations of tap dancers and of audiences all over the world.

A proxima.

PO