The Wall Street Journal: Telling Tales in Tune Town

By PIA CATTON |  May 30, 2013

Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street JournalTommy Tune, who will perform Saturday at the Town Hall, in his East Side apartment.

Tommy Tune will not be wearing tap shoes at the Town Hall on Saturday night. Instead, Broadway’s leggy song-and-dance man has customized a pair of red cowboy boots in which to perform his show “Steps in Time.” “I put the taps on them, and I tell you, it’s a whole new world dancing in these boots,” he said.

The 90-minute one-night-only show—a tap-iography if there ever was one—covers his half-century on the stage and screen. After winning his first of nine Tony Awards in 1974, for his performance in the musical “Seesaw,” Mr. Tune blossomed into one of musical theater’s most recognizable (and tallest, at 6-foot-6) talents. He has won Tonys for directing “Nine”; for the choreography of “A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine” and “My One and Only” (for which he also won a Best Actor trophy); and for both the choreography and direction of both “Grand Hotel” and “The Will Rogers Follies.” When he was invited, in 1999, to perform a show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, it wound up running for 900 performances. “I went out for three months, and it was a success, so they just kept extending my contract,” he said.

Now, after touring a version of “Steps in Time,” the 74-year-old Texas native is bringing his razzle-dazzle back to New York, where his star took flight. “It’s time to stop and take a look,” he said. “The hardest part was what to leave out.”

Thomas Tune—his original given name—grew up in Houston, where he was spotted by a dance teacher who was visiting his school. Because the teacher needed boys in her regular classes, she gave him free lessons. Not long after, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo made a tour stop in Houston, and he was hooked on ballet. But as his frame began to grow to Lone Star State proportions (he now wears a 37½ inseam), he gravitated to tap and jazz. By high school, without knowing much of anything about the world of musical theater, he was directing and choreographing, including a production of “The Pajama Game.”

Bettmann/Corbis
Mr. Tune at Lincoln Center in 1967.

“I didn’t know the word ‘choreograph.’ I just directed it and made up the dances,” he recalled. “I had no training. And I had no footsteps to follow.”

In “Steps in Time,” Mr. Tune relates stories of his early life in Texas, as well as his first encounters in New York. Among the tales is a detailed re-enactment of his first audition, for a part in a tour of “Irma La Douce.” He got the job, and it led to chorus roles in shows including “Baker Street” (his Broadway debut, in 1965), “A Joyful Noise” and “How Now, Dow Jones.”

By that point, he’d pretty much accomplished his boyhood goals. “My dream was to dance in the chorus of a Broadway show,” he said. “Looking back, it was a foolish dream because chorus boys aren’t built like this. But I didn’t know that!”

When Hollywood came calling, he went off to shoot Gene Kelly’s “Hello, Dolly!” (1969), Ken Russell’s “The Boy Friend” (1971) and Carlo Di Palma’s “Mimi Bluette… fiore del mio giardino” (1977). But the film and television work didn’t quite stick (“Mimi” was his final film) and he returned for a long and successful career on Broadway, stories of which populate “Steps in Time.” (The title is a reference to a basic move in tap dance known as a “time step.”)

Four decades later, he has his own chorus boys to back him up. In “Steps in Time,” the Manhattan Rhythm Kings accompany him onstage when he’s not telling stories about, say, dancer Charles “Honi” Coles, his tap mentor. “We did over 1,000 performances of ‘My One and Only’ together,” said Mr. Tune, who didn’t want to spoil the story by telling it in his spacious East Side living room.

He lives there with his tiny Yorkshire Terrier, Little Shubert (after the 42nd Street theater). The penthouse apartment has ceilings befitting a man of his height, with a very tall shelf in one corner housing his nine Tonys. When not rehearsing or performing, he devotes himself to a life of creativity: he’s a painter, a collector and stickler for sartorial details. His days do not include much in the way of mobile technology. “I had a cell phone for two months, and it interrupted every creative thought I was having,” he said. “Creative thoughts are fragile.”

In preparing for his one night at the Town Hall, he’s visited the stage and found it welcoming. “As tap dancers, our instrument is the stage we’re tapping on. Some have a good sound. Some thud,” he said. “Town Hall is an old stage, so it has good wood.”

For a dancer in his 70s, he’s had no shortage of stage time with this and other acts he’s created. While choreographing “Steps in Time,” Mr. Tune realized that because he was performing as himself—as opposed to a character—wearing traditional tap shoes didn’t feel quite right. After walking to rehearsal one day in cowboy boots, he kept them on and noticed he was delivering his stories better. “The stance is different,” he said. “I’m telling true stories, and they come out in a more authentic fashion.”

So the boots stayed, making this long, tall Texan even a bit taller.