{
download_links:[
{
label:'MODS Bibliographic Record',
link: 'mods.xml',
meta: 'XML'
},
{
label:'METS Object Description',
link: 'mets.xml',
meta: 'XML'
}
]
}
Tina Pratt [biography]
Dates: 1935-
Birth Date: Jan 15, 1935
Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Tina Pratt, jazz tap and exotic dancer, was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Annabel, jitterbugged and staged shows in the projects where they lived in Pittsburgh; her father, Ernest, encouraged her by taking her to shows at the old Nixon Theater in Pittsburgh, where she fell in love with tap after seeing the Whitman Sisters, Bill Robinson, Ralph Brown, and the Edwards Sisters. At age six, she became the first black student to attend Mamie Barth Dance Academy in Pittsburgh, where she studied ballet, tap, and acrobatics. At the age of fifteen she was dancing professionally, at age eighteen, she was dancing in nightclubs and show bars in Detroit and Cleveland. While in Cleveland, she met the four McCoy sisters who invited her to join their act; they did line, chorus, jazz and tap. They hired her because of her versatility and ability to perform exotic dance solos. During the next decade she danced in the United States and Canada. After touring Europe and working in Montreal, she returned to the states in the 1950s to discover that tap dancing was no longer popular. "That is when tap dancers became comedians or MCs, singers, going into something else besides tap-dancing. It wasn't popular . . . and the young people felt that tap dancing was more like Uncle Tom dancing, and so they away from that." Pratt turned to exotic dancing, working strictly as a soloist in small black clubs in Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and Baltimore. "We had a chitlin circuit for black people, and we had black and white musicians unions. And when the musicians union merged, we went under the rules and regulations of the white unions. But at clubs in the black communities, we worked like $25 a night. White clubs you got more money. Black clubs couldn't afford that. So they went from big bands to small bands . . . to small groups. And then they lost the chorus lines. And they just started doing two acts, a singer and a dancer."
In 1960 Pratt moved to Boston where she settled for the next sixteen years. She joined the Fou-chee dancers, a jazz, Afro-Cuban dance team, and became the founder of Show Biz Association Producers with Jimmy Slyde and Irwin C. Watson, doing shows with John Stepping Stone, James Mitchell, Leon Collins, and Willlie Spencer, and receiving numerous awards for her artistry and community service.
It was not until 1972-73 that Pratt returned to tap dancing. "Exotic dancers and strippers went out," she recalled. They went into go-go dancing and into pornography. And I didn't like that. And I left my dance team. And the supper clubs and the nightclubs really petered out. So you really didn't have anything." In 1977, Pratt relocated to New York City where she featured herself as a tap dance soloist. She also taught privately and at Ned Williams' dancing school, on 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, and Boy's Harbour, on 105th Street and Fifth Avenue. In New York, Pratt performed with Jaki Byard's band, the Apollo Stompers, and Barry Harris' jazz ensemble, becoming deeply involved in jazz history. She also performed with a number of performance artists including Sammy Davis, Jr., Flip Wilson, Redd Fox, Sarah Vaughan, Ernie Wilkins, Baby Laurence, Bunny Briggs, Short Davis, Sandman Sims, and Hines, Hines & Dad. When she performed with Count Basie, he said Pratt "laid down some iron," one of the greatest compliments for a tap dancer. She also individuated her tap-dancing style: "When I started tap dancing I was doing all the straight jazz tunes. But when I got here to New York and found out that everybody else was doing that, I decided to do something different. I started using Latin music."
"I like to dance in a medium tempo, so I can do a whole lot of things. Thanks to Jaki Byard, Barry Harris, and Hilton Ruiz, who motivated me into creating my style of dancing, I found out I was a lyrical dancer . . . beautiful songs, ‘How Insensative,' ‘Blue Bossa,' ‘Con Alma.'"
In 1983 Pratt produced Sepia Artistry with Show Biz Associates at the Schimmel Art Center of Pace University, downtown New York City. This synopsis of black dance forms featured the Swinging Seniors, ex-members of the chorus lines from Small's Paradise, Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and the Apollo Theatre. Performers also included Mable Lee, Buster Brown and Charles Cook from the Copasetics; Chink Grimes, Harriet Browne, Jose Suarez, Freddy Alvarez, and the Original Hoofers (Lon Chaney, George Hillman, Ralph Brown, Jimmy Slyde). Off Broadway, Pratt performed in Shades of Harlem (1984), with Roxane Butterfly's Beauteez and the Beat. In 1996, Pratt received the Tri-State Children's Tap Conference Award for excellence in teaching and service to young tap dancers.
Pratt has always presented herself as a high-heeled dancer: "I never danced in flat shoes because if they wanted a boy they'd get a boy dancer. A woman, they'd get a woman dancer. Whatever your costume called for, that's what you danced in. Even the guys danced in high-heeled shoes, women's comfort, those old lady shoes, Spanish heels. They weren't flat-footed dancers. I think Bill Bailey was the only one I saw who was a flat-footed dancer. But most of those dancers, Bill Robinson, Ziggy Johnson . . . they danced way up on their toes. Everything was done up on their toes. Heels were used as an accent."
(Sources: Melba Huber. "Tina Pratt: A Tap Survivor," Dance and the Arts (1996); Max Pollak, "Interview with Tina Pratt: An Interview With One of the Legends of Tap," International Ta[p Association Newsletter (vol. 9, no. 6, March-April 1999, 3-7); Max Pollak, "Interview with Tina Pratt : An Interview With One of the Legends of Tap, Part II," International Tap Association Newsletter (vol. 10, no. 1, May-June 1999, 32-39)]