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Founding a Movement - Cholly Atkins


In a fitting bit of blind fate, the teen-pop explosion of recent years fizzled in 2003 just as Cholly Atkins ended his days on Earth. No doubt Atkins' name would mean nothing to Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears, but they and several other generations of pop and R&B artists would probably never have succeeded at the level they did without Atkins' pioneering work, which, despite being eminently visible, not to mention visual, has hidden in plain sight for decades. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Atkins taught singing groups — including all the major Motown artists from the record label's heyday — how to move with grace and to move together, how to accentuate their vocal performances with their bodies, how to create more excitement onstage with a few choice gestures and steps. In other words, how to not just stand there.




As in the '50s, times and tastes changed. Atkins was among the longtime Motown loyalists left behind when the label decamped from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1971, and the number of R&B groups depending on Atkins-style choreography began to dwindle. A few years later, he and his second wife, Maye, relocated permanently to Las Vegas, where he worked in nightclubs. But Atkins lived long enough to see his beloved tap undergo a renaissance. He won a Tony award for choreographing the 1988 tap-revival show Black and Blue and enjoyed a third career as a revered teacher and a personification of living dance history.

The impact he had on Motown's art and artists was profound — the Temptations continued to return to Atkins for periodic refreshers until his death on April 19 of pancreatic cancer at age 89; Gladys Knight and the Supremes' Mary Wilson were with him when he died — but his legacy reaches further. The choreography found in the videos and stage acts of contemporary pop, R&B, and hip-hop artists is usually a far cry from the polish and elegant economy of Atkins' classic Motown-era routines, but it all hearkens back to a practice that Atkins codified and perfected. And though teen pop may have stutter-stepped its last for now, the next time four or five young singers need something to do with the rest of their bodies while their vocal cords do the hard work, Atkins' spirit is sure to be somewhere nearby.