Class Act and Challenge

Abstract

This chapter gives a historic explication of the Nicholas Brothers’ style of jazz tap dancing that was simultaneously a class act—a precision-style dancing of impeccable execution—and a mode of call-and-response interplay in which the brothers challenged each other in playful camaraderie to “up” each other in steps. At the turn of the century, concurrent with musical comedy dance teams working in the blackface tradition, an elite group of black performers rejected the minstrel show stereotype of the grinning-and- shuffling blackface clown, insisting upon the perfection of sound, step, and manner. Such pioneering class-act teams as Cole and Johnson, Johnson and Dean, and Greenlee and Drayton aspired to a purely artistic expression that was driven by the desire for respectability and equality on the American concert stage. The Nicholas Brothers transformed the fierce competition of the challenge dance by combining their specialties in building their routine to a climax; and trading rhythms back and forth in a lively and witty dialog that developed complex rhythmical ideas.