Fayard Nicholas, the Tony Award winning choreographer who was one half of the athletic dance duo The Nicholas Brothers, died Jan. 24 of pneumonia and other complications of a stroke, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Nicholas was 91. With his brother, Harold, Mr. Nicholas wowed audiences with their wildly aggressive tap routines, which included slides across the floor and a signature to-the-floor leg splits done without the use of their hands to break the impact. The younger brother, Harold, died in 2000. (Fayard is on top in the photograph.)
Their work influenced dancers from Gene Kelly to Fred Astaire to Debbie Allen to Gregory Hines to Savion Glover.
Mr. Nicholas won the Best Choreography Tony Award in 1989 for his work on the revue Black and Blue. The brothers appeared on Broadway as early as the Depression era, in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. The were also featured players at the Cotton Club, and a career in Hollywood followed.
They performed with Gene Kelly in the M-G-M picture “The Pirate” (1948). Other film work had them dancing together without having genuine speaking roles (so their work could be edited out when the film played the racially intolerant South).
Fred Astaire went on record saying their work in “Stormy Weather” (1943) represented some of the most perfect choreography captured on film. The dance sequence in the latter picture was called “Jumpin’ Jive.”
In the number, according to AP, “the brothers tap across music stands in an orchestra with the fearless exuberance of children stone-hopping across a pond. In the finale, they leap-frog seamlessly down a sweeping staircase.”
Like so many dancers of their era, they started in vaudeville They were inspired by their musician parents, who played in orchestra pits.
“One day at the Standard Theater in Philadelphia, I looked onstage and I thought, ‘They’re having fun up there; I’d like to do something like that,’” Fayard recalled in a 1999 interview, according to AP.
The created an act called “The Nicholas Kids” and by 1928 they bowed in vaudeville. They were known for performing in top hat and tails. The Cotton Club in Harlem is where they got noticed.
The Nicholas Brothers appeared in Broadway’s Sammy, a specialty concert starring Sammy Davis Jr. in 1974. Fayard appeared in the musical St. Louis Woman in 1946, and the brothers danced the specialty song “All Dark People” in the 1937 musical comedy Babes in Arms, which had racial intolerance as part of its plot. That song is no longer part of the licensed version of the Rodgers and Hart show, and a lyric-less version of it was used in the Encores! concert version that played City Center in 1999.
Harold Nicholas returned to Broadway in The Tap Dance Kid and Sophisticated Ladies. The brothers were awarded Kennedy Center Honors in 1991.
Mr. Nicholas was married three times. He married dancer Katherine Hopkins in 2000.
From Playbill.com
7 comments ↓
I just saw Mr. Nicholas on a TV special…didn’t realize he and his brother (and parents) made such awesome artistic contributions.
RIP
RIP
Now here’s a life worth a movie and several books on, the Nicholas Brothers paved the way. I hope the family collectively hones in on their story and shares it with the world.
They also influenced Sammy Davis Jr. right about the time he started to be a household name.
What a great loss on many a level.
An amazing and legendary talent. In a fairer world, he would have been as famous as Astaire and Kelly.
Resquiat in pace.
Hi Bernie, I just saw this in the NYTimes, check it out:
VAUDEVILLE NATION
LaRouge Domino. King of the Hot Foot. Come one, come all to the New York Public Library, where these and other native varieties and foreign novelties are on display in Vaudeville Nation. Full of photographs, films and audio clips, playbills, letters and even the instructive notebook pages of a strongman, this free exhibition offers a delightful escape from an otherwise dreary winter afternoon. Thriving on touring circuits throughout the country from the 1880’s through the 1930’s, vaudeville had a broad influence on American culture and entertainment. In addition to oddities, circus acts and magicians (including Houdini) the show featured gender impersonators, comic routines based on immigrant experiences, and skits on topical political issues. Vaudeville, replete with ministrelsy and burlesque, also helped foster America’s two great and related art forms, jazz and modern tap dance, through performers like the hoofer Bill Robinson, known as Bojangles, whose legendary feet can be heard as an audio sampler at the exhibition. Tap was just one of the dance forms used by Vaudeville performers –there were also ethnic and character dancers and exhibition ballroom teams (not to mention striptease routines and the Marvelous Ice Ballet, featuring Charlotte, Queen of the Steel Runners). Library visitors inspired by the creative variety are invited to make use of the ehibition’s piano and Fireside Treasury of Songs. A series of free talks and screenings will also be held, beginning Feb. 4 at 3 p.m. with “Waltzing in the Dark: African-American Vaudeville and Race Politics.” (Tuesdays through Saturdays through April 1, noon until 6 p.m., to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at 111 Amsterdam Avenue, at 65th Street, Lincoln Center, their telephone number (212) 870-1630
Visit http://www.nypl.org
aw man…I hadn’t heard about his passing. I grew up tap dancing. He and his brother were incredible. I really admired their charisma, talent and pizazz.
I just heard about his passing a couple of weeks ago. He and his brother were amazingly gifted souls. I am sure their legacy will live on.