Charles Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins

Charles Atkins was born in 1913, and died at age 90 years old in 2003. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Charles "Cholly" Atkins.

New York Times OBITUARY Charles (Honi) Coles, 81, Dancer; Known for Elegance and Speed By JENNIFER DUNNING Published: November 13, 1992 Charles (Honi) Coles, a virtuoso tap dancer who won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway musical "My One and Only" and whom Lena Horne once described as making "butterflies look clumsy," died yesterday at his home in East Elmhurst, Queens. He was 81 years old. He died of cancer, said his wife, Marian. Mr. Coles was a dancer of superb elegance and feathery light technique, both as a member of Coles and Atkins, the tap duo, and as a soloist. A disciple of Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, he believed in dancing up on the toes and moving naturally. Although he never appeared in the kinds of movie musicals that helped to make dancers like Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers famous, Mr. Coles appeared in star dance roles on Broadway. He and his longtime tap partner, Cholly Atkins, performed a show-stopping routine they choreographed in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in 1949, and Mr. Coles appeared as a soloist in "Bubbling Brown Sugar" in 1976 and "My One and Only" in 1982; his Tony Award, as well as the Drama Desk Award he won that year, were for best featured actor in a musical. Sophistication and Speed He and Mr. Atkins performed together with many of the great jazz bands from 1945 to 1949. Coles and Atkins was the last of the "class acts," tap duos that performed from the late 1920's to the late 1940's, known for their sophistication and musicality and the innovation of their dancing. But Mr. Coles was also known for his speed. As a young, self-taught dancer, he practiced alone for long hours each day for a year, in 1931, learning not just to speed up his dancing and to add more taps but, unusually, how to complicate patterns by extending the duration of the steps. Reminiscing about his long career in 1983, Mr. Coles, a courtly, unflappable man, said: "Things happen with me now from the knees down, nice and easy. But at one time I had the fastest feet in show business -- barring nobody. I'm not saying I was the best dancer, but I was the fastest." Mr. Coles grew up in Philadelphia, also the home of the Nicholas Brothers, at a time in the 1920's when every sidewalk and alley seemed filled with competing young tap-dancers, and his career mirrored the ups and downs of tap. His first jobs were in New York with the Three Millers in 1931, with the Lucky Seven Trio in 1932, and with Cab Calloway's band, where Mr. Coles and Mr. Atkins met. Time Out for the Army Mr. Coles and Mr. Atkins joined the Army in 1943, returning to New York after the war to dance together on Broadway, at the Apollo Theater and other famous theaters and clubs around the country and in Europe, including a highly successful tour of England in 1948. They broke up as a team, then reunited in 1955, performing in Las Vegas with Tony Martin and later with Pearl Bailey. With no jobs in sight, Mr. Coles worked as production manager at the Apollo through 1976, also serving as the president of the Negro Actors Guild. There were other brief reunions, including a 1962 appearance on a tap history program at the Newport Jazz Festival. While Mr. Atkins continued his solo career and taught Motown singers how to move, Mr. Coles became a major figure in the tap revivals of the 1960's and 70's, on the stage and television. Major stage shows included "Steps in Time" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for which he was an artistic consultant, and "Black Broadway, 1900-1945" at Avery Fisher Hall, both in 1979. He returned to the academy in 1982 in "Tappin' Uptown," and appeared at the Village Gate with the Copasetics tap revue in 1984. Acting and Educating Mr. Coles also appeared in the films "Dirty Dancing" and "The Cotton Club." He was a master teacher at tap workshops throughout the country and taught black dance and its history at Yale, Cornell, Duke and George Washington Universities. He was a guest artist in Agnes de Mille's "Conversations About the Dance" programs with the Joffrey Ballet in 1977 and 1978. Mr. Coles received the New York City Award of Honor for Arts and Culture in 1986, the Capezio Award in 1988 and the National Medal of the Arts in 1991. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a brother, George, of Atlantic City, N.J.; a sister, Juanita, of Atco, N.J.; a daughter, Isabelle Coles-Dunbar of Rosedale, Queens; a son by a previous relationship; eight grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. The funeral is to be on Monday at noon at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street.