@popculture_historian: Gregory Hines knew the exact day Hines, Hines, & Dad ended. “Actually, it was May 4, 1973,” he told The New York Times. “Mother was tired of traveling,” Maurice continued. “And my brother and I started going our own ways. Greg wanted to do more music, songwriting. I had things I wanted to do.” “It was a struggle,”Gregory said. “After being connected for so long — I don't remember not dancing with Maurice — it took a couple of years to get over the separation.” “They were dancing professionally from the time they were 5 and 7 — always being promoted together,” Gregory’s daughter Daria told me recently. “That can take a toll in many ways emotionally as one is growing.” Not to mention they were living in a very tumultuous time, especially for people of color, as you may recall from the pool story from the “Hines, Hines & Dad” post. “We were quite a close family. We traveled together all our lives. Without them, I was very, very lonely,” Maurice told the Altoona Mirror. So, Gregory’s homecoming wasn’t just about proximity. It was about reconnecting with his brother, his family. “‘Eubie!’ is a wonderful way to get together again,” he said. Their mother, Alma, saw the show 16 times. And their grandmother, Ora Hines — an original Cotton Club showgirl — also came to see the boys together again. “After the show, she brought us chicken, greens and potato salad backstage,” Maurice told the Times. The show is based on the life of James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, a ragtime jazz composer whose musical “Shuffle Along” was described by Playbill’s Marc Franklin as “the first time Broadway featured a production entirely written, directed, produced, and starring Black artists.” It’s largely credited with launching The Harlem Renaissance, and noted Harlem intellectual Rudolf Fisher insisted that the influx of white people coming to see the play "had ruined his favorite places of African-American sociability in Harlem," echoing the complaints of Langston Hughes about The Cotton Club. (See the Nicholas Brothers post.) They were also reunited with their teacher and mentor, Henry LeTang, who knew them so well, and could choreograph them like no one else. Gregory was already developing his “improvography” style of tap, which focused more on feeling the music and rhythms than rigid steps and styles. He got down low, focused, percussive, while his brother stayed more upright, with flamboyant arm movements, and yet perfectly in sync. The New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff said that with Gregory, "visual elegance, as always, yields to aural power. The complexity of sound grows in intensity and range." “Like a jazz musician who ornaments a melody with improvisational riffs, Hines improvised within the frame of the dance,” said Dance Magazine’s Constance Valis Hill. His style “demanded the percussive phrasing of a composer, the rhythms of a drummer, and the lines of a dancer.” Sally Sommer concurred, saying he “played his floor like a drum, testing the surface until he found the spot, sounding the wood for melodies, pitches and thunks.” I think the cool clapping thing they always do is part of that tradition. Incidentally, I will never tire of that. It’s about the dopest thing ever. (If you agree, check out a 1990 Laurence Fishburne movie called “Cadence.” It will scratch the same itch.) Maurice, as always, turned the spotlight on Gregory. “It was wonderful dancing with my brother again. He really was the greatest tap dancer of his generation,” he recalled in the Times. “I could hang, but I had to choreograph my steps.” But don’t sleep on Maurice. The truth was, he was a very accomplished man, who just had different priorities. “Professionally, we grew a little differently,” he told the Times. “Greg was more drawn to the rhythm dancers, like John Bubbles. He hated ballet. I loved it.” (continues in comments…) #popculturehistorian #gregoryhines #mauricehines #tapdance #broadway

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Thursday 30 April 2026 19:23:30 GMT