Veteran Tap Dancer Leon Collins, 63, Dies

Leon Collins, a veteran tap dancer whose final performances included last summer’s Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, has died of cancer at age 63.

Collins, who died Tuesday at Beth Israel Hospital, was a Chicago native who was dancing before he ever took lessons at age 15. As a boy he had earned money dancing to jukeboxes in Prohibition-era bars and clubs.

He was credited with being one of the key figures in the current revival of interest in tap dancing and received a 1983 Massachusetts Artists Foundation fellowship for choreography. At a benefit for Collins in February at Harvard’s Agassiz Theater, 400 people were turned away because of the overwhelming response.

Collins’ break in show business came when he was called as a last-minute substitute for a comedian at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He settled in Boston in the 1950s, saying he could always find work in New England.

When tap dancing was at a low point in popularity 20 years ago, Collins worked as an auto mechanic. He resumed dancing in the late 1970s and appeared with Count Basie’s orchestra at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival.

Collins taught tap dancing at the Harvard Summer Dance Center and danced in Italy with the Copasetics, a New York-based company.

In Los Angeles last August he was part of the Copasetics “American Tap” showcase and was praised by The Times dance critic Lewis Segal as a “true aristocrat” of the style.