 Brotherhood
in Rhythm : The Jazz Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers by
Constance Valis Hill
They
were two of the most explosive dancers of the twentieth century,
dazzling audiences with daredevil splits, slides, and hair-raising
flips. But they were also highly sophisticated dancers, refining
a centuries-old tradition of percussive dance into the rhythmic
brilliance of jazz tap at its zenith. They were Fayard and Harold
Nicholas, two American masters masterfully portrayed in this new
dual biography by Constance Valis Hill.
In Brotherhood
in Rhythm, Hill interweaves an intimate portrait of these great
performers with a richly detailed history of jazz music and jazz
dance, both bringing their act to life and explaining their significance
through a colorful analysis of their eloquent footwork, their
full-bodied expressiveness, and their changing style. Hill vividly
captures their soaring careers, from Cotton Club appearances with
Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Jimmie Lunceford, to film-stealing
big-screen performances with Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, and Glen
Miller. Drawing on a deep well of research and endless hours of
interviews with the Nicholas brothers themselves, she also documents
their struggles against the nets of racism and segregation that
constantly enmeshed their careers and denied them the recognition
they deserved. And to provide essential background to their career
and the development of their art, she also traces the three-hundred-year
evolution of jazz tap, showing how it emerged in the Southern
colonies in the 1700s, as the Irish jig and West African gioube
mutated into the American jig and juba.
More than
a biography of two talented but underappreciated performers, Brotherhood
in Rhythm offers a profound new understanding of this distinctively
American art and its intricate links to the history of jazz.
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