Joey’s still turning on the taps
Lifetime achievement award tells us what dance can accomplish
IF EVERYONE TAP DANCED, there might not be any more wars, or at least they’d be happier, betterlooking wars.
I’m thinking that as I watch Joey Hollingsworth stamp out delightful patterns of rapid invigorating sound, with his musical feet. His feet fall and bounce and fly off the floor, sure and rhythmic as the drumming of a refreshing rain on the sidewalk on a hot day.
“The key is balance,” says Joey, 82, of tap dancing. “Shifting the weight.”
Joey, who just won the Ontario Black History Society Lifetime Achievement Award, has been tap dancing since he was three, growing up in London, Ont. He learned from the Holloway twins, two red-
headed young ladies. He went pro at five.
Over his long career he met and danced with Bill Robinson (the famous “Mr. Bojangles”), and Gregory Hines, of course. And in 1964 he was on Ed Sullivan’s show.
The opening shot is of Joey playing congas to the song Caravan, followed by him jumping from the riser, doing the splits, then tap dancing his way through the song to another set of congas. Ed Sullivan, 1964. I’m sure there were other acts that year (wink, wink) but who could beat that?
He still dances. “But I don’t do the splits anymore,” he says with a rueful laugh.
We talk for a while in the room he shares with wife of 30 years, Dolina (nee McNiece), and their cat Candace at Victoria Gardens senior home on Victoria Avenue. Then we leave Dolina for a bit and repair to a common room on the second floor where we move some chairs and tables out the way.
Soon there are people in the hall, staff and residents, looking through the glass at Joey dancing. Smiles spontaneously break on to their faces. Then a woman comes into the room. It’s Dolina. She asks if she can watch.
Joey dances, something clears in Dolina’s eyes and she beams as if watching him for the first time.
That’s Joey. That’s tap. If you want pathos, watch “The Dying Swan” on a ballet stage. But if Joey is tapping, he can make Barber’s sad Adagio feel like “Walking On Sunshine.” It’s a happy form.
Joey’s got some things to be happy about. The lifetime achievement award, one of many he’s won over the years. And a few months ago his name finally came up on the waiting list at Victoria Garden and he was able to move from Ancaster and in with Dolina, who has Alzheimer’s.
He’s got the greatest stories, from a long life and career in performing. And the people he’s met. Like Fred Rogers, of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
“I played a dancing salesman,” Joey recalls. (People often don’t realize that the show started on CBC in 1963 as “Mister Rogers” and only got rebranded in the U.S. in 1966.)
For a tap dancer, meeting and sharing chops with the late Gregory Hines was perhaps most special. Hines spent much time in Ontario; his fiancé Negrita Jayde was from the Golden Horseshoe, and on one visit he and Joey had a chance to meet.
“Could he dance,” says Joey. “He was a master dancer. He brought tap to an art form.”
(Few know that the Hines is buried in Oakville, because of the Jayde connection. And dancers make pilgrimages there. Joey has in the past.)
The meeting with Bill Robinson happened in the 1940s, when Joey was a boy. Robinson was performing in London, Ont., and organizers set up a backstager for Joey the local tap wunderkind after the show. The press was there.
“Bojangles was a little mean,” he says. “When I asked for his autograph he said no. But then he said, because the press was there, ‘I want your autograph.’ But my dad didn’t laugh.”
Robinson did a step and asked Joey to match it. He did. But one shoe was flopping because the sole had ripped earlier. It was an odd meeting, but Bojangles later sent him a Christmas card.
He confronted prejudice and segregation at times on his tours into the United States.
He arrived at a job in Texas once to find he was booked at a segregated venue. He protested but did the show because his agent had committed him to it and he’s a pro.
Some time later, his agent booked him at the same spot. He refused to go. Then the agent explained — it was no longer a segregated venue. Joey had turned them around.
Contributions like that were part of the lifetime achievement recognition. It’s been a dance all right. Joey’s made the right moves, ending up just where he needs to be — in Hamilton, with love.