Charles Coles

Charles "Honi" Coles (April 2, 1911 – November 12, 1992) was an American actor and tap dancer, who was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003.

He had a distinctive personal style that required technical precision, high-speed tapping, and a close-to-the-floor style where "the legs and feet did the work".

Coles was also half of the professional tap dancing duo Coles and Atkins, whose specialty was performing with elegant style through various tap steps such as "swing dance", "over the top", "bebop", "buck and wing", and "slow drag".

He appeared in the films The Cotton Club and Dirty Dancing, as well as the documentary Great Feats of Feet.

Coles was also a tap-dancing companion of tap dancer Brenda Bufalino, the founder and director of the American Tap Dance Foundation.

Charles "Honi" Coles was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 2, 1911.

He was the son of George and Isabel Coles.

George Coles was an owner of a pool hall and a barbershop, while Isabel Coles was a domestic servant.

When Coles was a child, his sister took care of him and gave Coles the nickname "Honey".

Later, when he was around 14 or 15 years old, Coles belonged to a club called the Jolly Buccaneers and changed the spelling of his nickname to "Honi".

This nickname became a crucial part of Coles's life, in which his teachers also used to call him Honi.

As a child, "Honi" Coles could not afford to go to dancing school, so he figured out a different way to learn how to tap dance.

Coles and his friends gathered around the street corner of Philadelphia in the summer months to dance as a form of recreation.

Later, other guys from different neighborhoods joined Coles and his friends, which created various competitions among young tap dancers.

Billy Bailey, a talented dancer coming from another neighborhood, also competed on the street corner.

Through watching other people tap-danced and joining such contests, Coles and his friends began to master various sets of dance steps, but "with no thought of using dancing as a means of livelihood".

By his late teens, after years of learning and practicing tap-dancing on the streets of Philadelphia, Coles was determined to make a career in show business.

He practiced alone for a year to enhance his skill set, including speed, number of taps per beat, and complicated patterns.

Although Coles was taller and slimmer than average tap dancers, he managed to maximize the potential of his physical appearance.

Coles's fellow tap dancer, Pete Nugent, said that Coles could do "centipede steps," which means that his legs and feet could be pulled in opposite directions.

In 1931, Charles "Honi" Coles made his debut at the Lafayette Theater, a popular black venue at that time, in New York City as one of the Three Millers.

They were popular for their fast moves, including over-the-tops, barrel turns, and wings, on six-foot-high pedestals.

However, his partners hired another dancer to replace him, so Coles moved back to Philadelphia with a determination to perfect his fast-step style.

After spending time improving his technique, Coles returned to New York City in 1934 and performed at the Harlem Opera House and Apollo Theater.

When practicing at Joe Price's acrobatics studio in downtown New York, Coles encountered some white dancers who came to challenge him.

However, after Coles showed them his routines, the dancers walked away with confusion about his talent.

With his fast-rhythm technique, he was highly respected and reputed to have "the fastest feet in show business" by other tap dancers.

At the Hoofer's Club, a challenging stage for most talented tap dancers to compete in Harlem, Coles was still considered "the most graceful dancer ever seen" by his peers.

From 1936 to 1939, Coles replaced a member of the Lucky Seven Trio, who were the rivals to the Millers.

Lucky Seven Trio was a group tapping on large cubes that looked like dice and going through ten costume changes during their act.

In 1938, Coles teamed up with a comedian and then went single again.

Through the tour with the big swing bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, Coles polished his technique, successfully combining high-speed tapping with an elegant style.

In 1940, while performing as a dance soloist with Cab Calloway and his jive-swing orchestra, Coles met Charles "Cholly" Atkins.

In 1943, both of them joined the Army during wartime.

In 1946, after the war ended, they combined their unique techniques and styles to form the class act of Coles & Atkins and were hired to perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Atkins is a well-known jazz tap dancer, who choreographed, staged, and staged acts for many vocal groups of the 1960s.

"Honi" Coles's specialty was precision and fast-rhythm steps, while Atkins was an expert wing dancer known as "the man with the moves".

During his career, Coles was awarded the Dance Magazine Award in 1985, the Capezio Award for lifetime achievement in dance in 1988, and the National Medal of the Arts by President George H. W. Bush in 1991.

He was a tap mentor who believed, "If you can walk, you can tap."

Coles advocated for the development of tap dance and often claimed that "tap dance was the only dance art form that America could claim as its own".