{{Short description|High-quality show}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}} {{About|a noun phrase that lauds an admirable person, team, or organization||Class Act (disambiguation)}}
A '''class act''' is a performance, 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 performing artists working together) or an organization.
== 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.<ref name="Atkins 2001" /> 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 {{nowrap| ... }}
{{cquote|the ultimate example of what other protagonists of American vernacular dance call "a class act," and there can be no higher praise than that.<ref name="Thorpe 1990" />|25px|25px|}}
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,
{{cquote|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.|25px|25px|Cholly Atkins (2001)<ref name="Atkins 2001" />}}
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 {{nowrap| ... }} lazy, incompetent fools {{nowrap| ... }} and dandies who thought only of flashy clothes, flirtatious courting, new dances, and good looks.<ref name="Seibert 2016" /> Atkins' and his peers aspired to pure artistic expression driven by a desire for respectability and equality on the American concert stage.<ref name="PerformingArtsEnclopedia 1977" />
==== Class act syles, in tap ==== Marshall Stearns, in the 1964 television film, ''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."<ref name="Film-Over-the-Top 1965" /><ref name="DanceResearchJournal Summer 1988" />
== Selected "class acts" == === In tap dance === * The Cotton Club Boys, from 1934 to 1940, were the Cotton Club's stock class act dance troupe * John "Bubbles" Sublett and Ford "Buck" Washington * Cholly Atkins and Honi Coles * Willie Covan and Leonard Ruffin * Eddie Sledge and Fred Davis ''(aka'' Fred and Sledge) * Charles Cook and Ernest Brown * Eddie Rector (1890–1962)<ref name="Willis 2016" /> * Dickie Wells, Jimmy Mordecai, Earnest Taylor * Nicholas brothers<ref name="Hill 2002" /> * Gary Lambert "Pete" Nugent (1909–1973), Irving "Peaches" Beamon (born 1911), Duke Miller (1910–1937)<ref name="Hill 2010" /><ref name="Hill 2002" />
=== In vaudeville === * Rosamond Johnson and Bob Cole, vaudeville duo that began in 1902<ref name="Wintz-Finkelman 2004" />
== Contrasting noun phrase == A "'''flash act'''," in tap dance, includes acrobatic movements. The Nicholas brothers, who famously performed class acts, also did flash acts.<ref name="Atkins 2001" />
== References == {{Reflist|50em|refs=
<ref name="Atkins 2001">''Class Act: The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins'' (memoir), by Cholly Atkins & Jacqui Malone, Columbia University Press (2001), pg. 114; {{OCLC|974087440}}<div style="margin-left:2em">[https://books.google.com/books?id=DQ0R8D6esKAC&pg=PA114 "Class act" (discussion)] ([https://books.google.com/books?id=k8YzCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA114 alternate link]) pg. 114<br />[https://books.google.com/books?id=DQ0R8D6esKAC&pg=PA226 "Class act" (defined)] ([https://books.google.com/books?id=k8YzCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA226 alternate link]), pg. 226<br />[https://books.google.com/books?id=DQ0R8D6esKAC&pg=PA227 "Flash act" (defined)] ([https://books.google.com/books?id=k8YzCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA227 alternate link]), pg. 227</div>Note: 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</ref>
<ref name="PerformingArtsEnclopedia 1977">[http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.34/default.html "Class Act,"] ''Performing Arts Encyclopedia'' c/o Library of Congress (online); {{OCLC|76944288|54373218}}<div style="margin-left:2em">[http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/tda-browse?list=title&start=C&sort=titlesort (browse ''Encyclopedia)'']</div></ref>
<ref name="Film-Over-the-Top 1965">''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DJPusWF_-4 "Over the Top to Be-Bop]''<div style="margin-left:2em"> ''Camera Three'', Season 10, Episode 18, CBS<br /> Aired Sunday, 11:30 am, 3 January 1965<br /> Produced for WCBS-TV by Dan Gallagher<br /> 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); {{OCLC||37633199|8511663}}<br /> New York State Education Dept (1965); {{OCLC|19009050}}<br /> Creative Arts Television (VHS) (19??); {{OCLC|38594171}}<br /> Creative Arts Television (VHS) (1997); {{OCLC|41462387|50611853}}<br /> Creative Arts Television (DVD) (2007); {{OCLC|181202686|174151608}}<br /> Aviva Films Ltd. (digital) (2007); {{OCLC|830519421}}</div></ref>
<ref name="DanceResearchJournal Summer 1988">"'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 24 March 2017; stable URL {{url|https://www.jstor.org/stable/1478812}})</ref>
<ref name="Thorpe 1990">''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 {{age|1955|09|13}} years)<div style="margin-left:2em">Chatto & Windus (1989) {{OCLC|915815720}}<br />Overlook Press (1995); {{OCLC|260151435|232129452}}</div></ref>
<ref name="Hill 2010">''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_HERDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History]'' ([https://books.google.com/books?id=rU9dUaCsd94C&pg=PA41 alternate link 1]; [https://books.google.com/books?id=dk1pAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 alt link 2]) by Constance Valis Hill, PhD (born 1947), Oxford University Press (2010), pps. 41–42; {{OCLC|888554987}}</ref>
<ref name="Hill 2002">''[https://books.google.com/books?id=XftIZVsinN8C&pg=PA134 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}}</ref>
<ref name="Wintz-Finkelman 2004">[https://books.google.com/books?id=z6Cs0Y1pvRAC&pg=PA636 "Johnson, John Rosamond"] ([https://books.google.com/books?id=0L0ULjto_OEC&pg=PT636 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}}</ref>
<ref name="Seibert 2016">''What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing,'' by Brian Seibert, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2016) pps. [https://books.google.com/books?id=SgPzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA180 180], [https://books.google.com/books?id=SgPzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA200 200], [https://books.google.com/books?id=SgPzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA307 307]</ref>
<ref name="Willis 2016">''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VaEfDAAAQBAJ&dq=%22class+act%22+harlem&pg=PA213 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}}</ref>
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Category:Dance terminology