Cholly Atkins: His Choreography Put the Slickness in Motown Artists BY DAVID LYMAN They didn't know his name. But Friday night, when the Funk Brothers got to that point in "Stop! (In the Name of Love)" -- the point where the Supremes plant their feet and defiantly thrust their arms forward -- nearly every person in the Detroit Opera House joined in with the choreography. "You saw 2,000 people doing a Cholly Atkins move," said Brian Pastoria, a partner in the Harmonie Park Creative Group and a longtime friend of Atkins. "It was amazing." Charles (Cholly) Atkins, the former vaudeville star credited with giving Motown groups their sharp and sassy moves, died late Saturday in a Las Vegas hospital. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February. He was 89. Atkins was a star long before Berry Gordy brought him to Detroit in 1964 to add a Broadway polish to his stable of talented but rough-hewn Motown performers. He had been a legend on the vaudeville circuit, where he was half of a fabled tap-dance duo with Charles (Honi) Coles. And in 1989, he shared a Tony award for choreography for Broadway's "Black and Blue." But it was during Atkins' years in Detroit, when he helped shape the glory days of Motown Records, that he made his lasting mark on American popular culture. He put the Look in the Motown Look, creating precise choreographic routines -- vocal choreography he called it -- that helped define the music of the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas and others. It was a major part of the mainstream refinement that allowed Motown groups to vault the racial barriers that stood in the way of so many black performers before them. "He taught us to move in spite of our capabilities," said Martha Reeves, lead singer of Martha and the Vandellas, who worked with Atkins for more than a decade. "Before he started, he would analyze the songs and he would have a mapped-out set of steps for each vocal movement. Our performances had twice the value because of his input," Reeves said Monday. Born Sept. 13, 1913, in rural Alabama, Atkins moved with his mother and brother, Spencer, to Buffalo, N.Y., when he was 5 or 6. Inspired by the choreography of a grade-school teacher who staged variety shows, he parlayed his skills into work as a street performer, a dancing and singing waiter and, in the years before World War II, a dancer touring with Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. After the war, he teamed with Coles. But by the mid-1950s, public interest in tap dance was fading, and Atkins was hired to add onstage pizzazz to a vocal group called the Cadillacs. "It was like nothing you had ever seen," said Duke Fakir, a member of the Four Tops, which soon after worked with Atkins. The perfect gentleman Atkins was known throughout the industry as a gentleman. Indeed, his biography, co-authored by New York dance historian Jacqui Malone, is titled "Class Act: The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins" ($14.95, Columbia University Press). For all of his reputation as a straight arrow, though, Atkins' name was a total fabrication. Cholly was a name he heisted from Cholly Knickerbocker, a society columnist for the New York Journal-American. And Atkins was a shortened form of his last name, Atkinson, which was regarded as too long for theater marquees. "Besides, 'Coles and Atkins' sounded better than 'Coles and Atkinson,' " said Maye Atkinson, 84, his widow. One of Atkins' earliest Detroit connections was with the Miracles. "We had been to the Apollo about a year before we met Cholly and we didn't have any choreography at all," said Bobby Rogers, one of the group's original members. "We were just popping our fingers and moving our feet a little. The owner of the Apollo said, 'I don't want you guys back here ever again.' " The Apollo Theater in New York was then the top venue for black singers. When the Miracles had an enormous hit with "Shop Around," they took some of their royalty money and hired Atkins. "He worked us eight hours a day at his house on Buena Vista," recalls Rogers. "He gave us a class that no one else in the country had." Atkins and his wife moved to Las Vegas in the mid-1970s, several years after Motown Records relocated to Los Angeles. There, he continued to work with groups he had helped make famous. But the recognition that many people felt he deserved continued to elude him. "Motown never mentioned his name," said his wife. She recounted a Motown 25th anniversary celebration in which her husband was supposed to introduce the Temptations. Four hours before the performance, he was told his part had been cut. "He never complained about it, but it broke his heart," she said. In the mid-1990s, though, that recognition finally came -- but not from Motown. Like so many of the tap masters before him, Atkins was rediscovered by major U.S. dance festivals. He was given grants and honorary degrees; he continued to teach, perform and share the inspirational tales of his career. "He gave us more than steps," Fakir said. "Cholly gave us wisdom. He taught us how to touch an audience and about living life. He was Motown's father figure." Choreography may have made Atkins a star, but he rarely danced outside the studio. Atkins and his wife met June 22, 1962, on a blind date in New York. Neither was really interested in a relationship. She had a career at Macy's. And Atkins was still recovering from the death of his second wife, Dottie Saulters, two years earlier. An earlier marriage had ended in divorce. The couple went dancing. "We danced every dance that night," Maye Atkinson said Monday from the couple's Las Vegas home. "But after that we never did dance again. Come June, we would have been married 40 years. But he wouldn't dance. 'That's my business,' he always said. 'I don't dance unless I get paid.' I guess I should have paid him." Source: The Detroit Free Press

New York Dancewear Company
188-06 Union Turnpike, Flushing, NY 11366, Toll Free: 1-800-775-DANCE (3262), 1-718-464-8980, Fax:1-718-464-8988
Terms and Conditions
Search Our Dancewear Products | Shoes | Bodywear | Special Cut to Order Bodywear | Dancewear Accessories and Gifts | Gift Certificates
About Us | How to Order | Request  a Dancewear Catalog | Questions/Comments | Home