Gregory Hines

Gregory Oliver Hines was born in New York City on February 14, 1946, into a performing family, and began dancing as a very young child — working professionally by about age five. With his older brother Maurice he spent roughly fifteen years as the Hines Kids, their early routines shaped by the choreographer and teacher Henry LeTang. Just as formative was the brothers' closeness to the Apollo Theater's tap community, where Gregory learned by watching and working around masters such as Charles 'Honi' Coles, Howard 'Sandman' Sims, the Nicholas Brothers and Teddy Hale — an education rooted in observation, exchange and the living lineage of Black jazz tap.

The act grew into Hines, Hines and Dad when the brothers' father joined them on drums, and the nightclub and variety circuit gave Gregory an unusually broad command of timing, comedy, singing and audience rapport. After a period away from the family act he returned to New York and made his mature Broadway breakthrough in Eubie! (1978), the revue built on Eubie Blake's music, winning a Theatre World Award and his first Tony nomination. Tony-nominated leading roles in Comin' Uptown and Sophisticated Ladies soon followed, placing a tap artist at the center of major Broadway productions rather than treating tap as a nostalgic specialty turn.

Film widened his reach. He danced with Maurice in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984), met Mikhail Baryshnikov in a celebrated tap-and-ballet dialogue in White Nights (1985), and starred in Tap (1989). Tap matters to dance history because its 'challenge' sequences gathered Hines with Sammy Davis Jr. and a cohort of veteran hoofers — Arthur Duncan, Bunny Briggs, Howard Sims, Steve Condos, Harold Nicholas and Jimmy Slyde among them — with dance material created alongside Henry LeTang, putting intergenerational transmission rather than solo display at the center of a commercial movie.

Hines also used television to present tap as a living American art. The 1989 PBS special Gregory Hines' Tap Dance in America placed established masters beside younger artists, including the teenage Savion Glover; the Library of Congress has described the program as a bridge between tap and mainstream entertainment. His mentorship of Glover became emblematic of a larger pattern — a celebrated star using his visibility to honor elders and introduce emerging dancers.

On Broadway he reached a summit as Jelly Roll Morton in Jelly's Last Jam, winning the 1992 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. He was also one of the show's tap choreographers, sharing that Tony nomination with Hope Clarke and Ted L. Levy — a collaborative credit that belongs with any account of the production's dancing. Across screen and stage he showed that a Black male dancer could sustain a wide-ranging identity as dramatic actor, comic performer, singer, host and choreographer.

Hines died in Los Angeles on August 9, 2003, at the age of 57. His influence outlasted his performances: institutions preserve collections tied to his career and tap advocacy, and in 2019 the United States Postal Service honored him with the 42nd stamp in its Black Heritage series. The recognition captured what dancers had long known — that he was not only a crossover celebrity but a steward of tap's history and a persuasive advocate for its future.