Tap Dancer Steve Condos; Stricken While Performing

Tap dancer Steve Condos collapsed and died in his dressing room after a grueling performance Sunday night at the biennial Festival of Dance in Lyon.

Doctors at the Lyon coroner’s institute said the cause of death appeared to be a heart attack.

“He gave an absolutely brilliant performance,” his wife, Lorraine Condos, told the Associated Press. “I was out front filming it. He walked off stage, went into his dressing room and collapsed.”

Condos, 71, a figure on the American stage for 50 years, had been in semi-retirement for years.

The veteran dancer, best known for his appearances with his late brother Nick as the Condos Brothers, won a huge ovation when the festival opened Friday night.

Condos was a central figure in the production, “Stars and Taps,” in which he performed a long, fast tap that left him breathless.

A native of Philadelphia, Condos had recently lived in Hollywood, Fla., performing only occasionally.

He was one of a small, elite cadre of veteran tap dancers who had ridden a wave of enthusiasm for tap in recent years to new popularity and esteem. He was among the hoofers in the 1989 movie “Tap,” which starred Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr. Condos played a dancer called “Steve.”

He also was featured in Hollywood musicals from the major studios alongside such stars as Betty Grable and danced in a number of Broadway musicals. He toured the United States and Europe with the Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington orchestras.

A strapping, square-jawed bear of a man, Condos was one of the few white stars in an art form usually dominated by blacks.