Charles "Honi" Coles
Charles "Honi" Coles danced close to the floor. His style demanded technical precision and very high speed, with the work done by the legs and feet rather than the upper body, and it stayed distinctive in a field crowded with showmen.
He was half of Coles and Atkins, a duo whose specialty was elegance: swing dance, over the top, bebop, buck and wing, the slow drag, all delivered as though the difficulty were beneath mentioning. He was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003.
Film came late and sparingly. This page holds three credits, one of them uncredited: a singer in Rocky II, a turn in The Cotton Club, and Tito Suarez in Dirty Dancing, which is where most people have seen him without knowing whose feet they were watching. That is a thin record for a major performing career, and the reason is simple: the career was on stage.
Movies (3)
Where to start with Charles "Honi" Coles
Availability decides this one. Dirty Dancing is the film everyone already has to hand, and watching him move beside actors who are performing dance rather than doing it tells you the whole story about the difference.
The Cotton Club is the better showcase and the more fitting setting, a film built around the Harlem club circuit his generation actually worked. Rocky II is a completist's footnote, uncredited and easy to miss. Three film credits is not much to go on, and the real body of work was on stage, in the tap tradition he helped carry forward.