Alex production taps into dancers’ old-movie legacy

With all due respect to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, the silver screen’s most electrifying dance duo was the Nicholas Brothers. While Astaire and Kelly glided with their respective dance partners in classic movie musicals, Fayard and Harold Nicholas slid, spun, flipped, leaped and flew through the air. There were other celebrated flash acts — dance teams that emphasized acrobatics — in the golden age of tap dancing, but none were classier than the Nicholas Brothers.

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FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post stated in the infobox and photo caption that the event would be held Saturday. It is on Sunday.

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With the help of great dance directors like Nick Castle at 20th Century Fox, the Nicholas Brothers seemed to defy the limitations of human anatomy. Their mind-boggling dance cameos in movie musicals like “Down Argentine Way,” “Sun Valley Serenade” and “Stormy Weather,” allowed them to achieve a mainstream status seldom attained by black dancers. The last film featured a tremendous sequence that concluded with the brothers successively jumping over each other and landing in the splits — down a giant staircase while the Cab Calloway Orchestra serenaded. Clad in their customary tuxedos, they made athletic dance bordering on mayhem look elegant.

The indelible legacy of Fayard (1914-2006) and Harold (1921-2000) Nicholas will be celebrated Sunday at the Alex Theatre in a show that combines movie clips and live dancing from such renowned tappers as Jason Samuels Smith. The show also hosts a panel discussion with Nichelle Nichols of “Star Trek” (a dancer-turned-actress), 96-year old choreographer Miriam Nelson and Tony Nicholas, son of Fayard.
Tegan Summer of Prospect Entertainment produces the program. Summer, who has also hosted special film screenings and talks at the Alex, has written dramatic treatments of key junctures in their partnership that will be acted for the show. A Londoner, his heart has always been in old cinema.
“The Nicholas Brothers are close to my heart,” Summer says. “They were equal portions of super talent and artists who would not use the back door. They were the only act of color who refused to bow to the racial stereotypes of the 1940s and ’50s.”

The sons of performers at the legendary Earle Theatre (the Apollo of Philadelphia), older brother Fayard began rehearsing and working out dance routines with his little brother when the latter was still in grade school. “Keep in mind,” says Tony Nicholas, “that they never had a dance lesson in their lives. But my father had a Kodak mind — he could look at different routines and steps and incorporate them into the act.”

The tribute will conclude with four Nicholas generations tapping on the Alex stage. Tony’s daughter Nicole, a reality TV producer at Fox, will be one of them. He recently visited her at the studio where his father and uncle committed iconic performances to film, and it was bittersweet. “The day they signed with Fox,” he recounts, “Daryl Zanuck told them to get lunch while he assembled some stars for a publicity photo. Harold and Fayard went to the commissary but were told that they couldn’t come in and eat; they had to go around to the back. When Zanuck heard about it, he fired the entire commissary staff. But it was heartwarming for me to have lunch with Nicole at Fox after all these years.”

In 1979, Fayard summed up the style of the Nicholas Brothers: “It wasn’t only tap dancing we were doing. We were moving the whole body, and the grace that we had made it a little different from other dancers. It had a combination of ballet, tap, acrobatics, the splits; the style and grace and all this combination made it the Nicholas Brothers.”
Signature acrobatics and physical derring-do make the Nicholas Brothers ripe for discovery by a younger generation of dancers and performers. This tribute show would be a good place for them to get acquainted with a standard that has yet to be equaled.

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What: Tribute to the Nicholas Brothers

Where: Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale

When: Sunday, Jan. 25, 7:30 p.m.

More info: (818) 243-2539, boxoffice@alextheatre.org

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KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and culture for Marquee.