Class act (performance)

A class act is a performance or personal trait or behavior that is distinctive and of high quality. As a noun phrase, it is typically used to refer to a single person, a team – such as a performing artists working together – or an organization.

This article is about a noun phrase that lauds an admirable person, team, or organization. For other uses, see Class Act (disambiguation).

Usage and contemporary etymology

In sports

In sports, a "class act" would be an athlete who not only performs exceptionally well, but also exhibits a range of other admirable qualities, on and off the field.

In dance

In dance during the jazz age and the swing era (the first half of the 20th century) – tap dance in particular – a class act was, and still is, a complimentary reference to a dance team that exhibits precision, elegant dress, detached coolness, flawless execution, and dignity.[1] In 1946, after serving in the Army, Charles "Honi" Coles and Cholly Atkins collaborated as a dance duo that became highly acclaimed. British dance critic Edward Thorpe, in his 1989 book, Black Dance, described Coles and Atkins as ...

the ultimate example of what other protagonists of American vernacular dance call "a class act," and there can be no higher praise than that.[2]

For black dancers of the jazz age and the swing era, the noun phrase, "class act," had a more nuanced meaning. According to Cholly Atkins, some performers and managers harbored stereotypical preferences of how black male dancers and musical comedy dance teams should dress and perform. To those performers and managers, a class act was more apropos for white male entertainers. Black entertainers who did it were likely to be perceived as defiant. Atkins, in his 2001 book, Class Act (co-authored with Jacqui Malone), stated that,

If they [white dancers] were singers or comics, they didn't like the fact that we were also doing those things as part of our act.

— Cholly Atkins (2001)[1]

Against the backdrop of dance teams working in the blackface tradition, Atkins was one in a long list of virtuoso black male dance artists who rejected the minstrel show stereotypes of the grinning-and-dancing clowns ... lazy, incompetent fools ... and dandies who thought only of flashy clothes, flirtatious courting, new dances, and good looks.[3] Atkins' and his peers aspired to pure artistic expression driven by a desire for respectability and equality on the American concert stage.[4]

Class act syles, in tap

Marshall Stearns, in the 1964 film-made-for-TV, Over the Top to Bebop, stated that the class act "started with the soft-shoe and the sand and the shuffle; and it grew up and became a dance in which you showed elegance and dignity and precision. And every class act in the thirties and forties had their own soft-shoe."[5][6]

Selected "class acts"

In tap dance

In vaudeville

Contrasting noun phrase

A "flash act," in tap dance, includes acrobatic movements. The Nicholas brothers, who famously performed class acts, also did flash acts.[1]

References
  1. Class Act: The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins (memoir), by Cholly Atkins & Jacqui Malone, Columbia University Press (2001), pg. 114; OCLC 974087440Note: Malone, a dance and theater scholar at Queens College, married, in 1973, Robert George O'Meally, PhD, American literature scholar and Zora Neale Hurston Professor of Literature at Columbia University, who, additionally, writes about jazz
  2. Black Dance, by Edward ("Ted") Thorpe (né Edward Robert Thorpe; born 1926) (retired sometime before 1995, was a dance critic for the London Evening Standard; he has been married to Gillian Freeman, a writer, for 65 years)
  3. What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing, by Brian Seibert, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2016) pps. 180, 200, 307
  4. "Class Act," Performing Arts Encyclopedia c/o Library of Congress (online); OCLC 76944288, 54373218
  5. "Over the Top to Be-Bop
    Camera Three, Season 10, Episode 18, CBS
    Aired Sunday, 11:30 A.M., January 3, 1965
    Produced for WCBS-TV by Dan Gallagher
    Nick Havinga (né Nicholas Havinga, Jr.; born 1935), director
    Featured artists: Coles and Cholly Atkins (dance duet)
    Other performers: Hank Jones (piano)
    James Fergus Macandrew (1906–1988) (program host)
    Guest: Marshall Stearns, PhD
    WCBS-TV (U-matic) (1965);
    New York State Education Dept (1965); OCLC 19009050
    Creative Arts Television (VHS) (19??); OCLC 38594171
    Creative Arts Television (VHS) (1997); OCLC 41462387, 50611853
    Creative Arts Television (DVD) (2007); OCLC 181202686, 174151608
    Aviva Films Ltd. (digital) (2007); OCLC 830519421
  6. "'Let the Punishment Fit the Crime': The Vocal Choreography of Cholly Atkins," by Jacqui Malone (MCP) (née Jacqueline Delores Malone; born 1947), Dance Research Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, Summer 1988, pps. 11–18 (retrieved March 24, 2017; stable URL www.jstor.org/stable/1478812)
  7. Tappin' at the Apollo: The African American Female Tap Dance Duo Salt and Pepper, by Cheryl M. Willis, McFarland & Company (2016), pg. 213; OCLC 917343455
  8. Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers, by Constance Valis Hill, PhD (born 1947), Cooper Square Press (2002), pps. 134; OCLC 845250422
  9. Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History (alternate link 1; alt link 2) by Constance Valis Hill, PhD (born 1947), Oxford University Press (2010), pps. 41–42; OCLC 888554987
  10. "Johnson, John Rosamond" (alt link), Cary D. Wintz & Paul Finkelman (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Vol. 1 of 2; A–J), Routledge (2004), pg. 636; OCLC 648136726, 56912455
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