グレゴリー・ハインズ癌で死去.
タップダンサーとして人気の高かったグレゴリー・ハインズが９日（土曜日）、ロスアンジェルスの病院で癌のために死去した。５７歳だった。
ハインズは、１９９２年、ミュージカル『ジェリーズ・ラスト・ジャム』でトニー賞を獲得している。ハインズは、もともと兄とともに二人組のダンスデュオとして売り出し、７８年、映画『ユービー』で一躍脚光を集めた。さらに、ブロードウェイの『ソフィスティケーテッド・レイディー』、さらに８４年、映画『コットン・クラブ』などで人気を決定づけている。
８５年、ロシアのダンサー、ミハエル・バリシニコフと共演した映画『ホワイト・ナイツ』では俳優としても注目された。
グレゴリー・ハインズは、１９４６年２月１４日ニューヨーク生まれ。母親が兄と彼にタップダンスをするように強く勧めたという。それは、ダンスで成功し、一家でゲットーを抜け出したいと考えたからだ。グレゴリーが５歳のときから踊りだし、６歳のときには、アポロ劇場に２週間連続で出場し、８歳でブロードウェイ・ミュージカルに出演した。十代の頃は、「ハインズ・ハインズ・アンド・ダッド」というグループ名で、兄弟二人と父でステージを見せていた。
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粋。
今、今日の日記を書こうとしたら、グレゴリー・ハインズ死去のニュースが飛び込んできたので、急遽、彼について書くことにした。
グレゴリー・ハインズで僕がまずよく覚えているのが、８５年の映画『ホワイト・ナイツ』http://www.stingray-jp.com/allcinema/prog/show_c.php3?num_c=00021781だ。ライオネル・リッチーが歌うテーマ曲「セイ・ユー、セイ・ミー」の歌声とともに大ヒットした映画である。アメリカに亡命したロシア人ダンサー（バリシニコフ）が、飛行機の不慮の事故でロシア領内に不時着することによって始まる手に汗握る物語で、二人のダンサーの友情が徐々に芽生えていくところなどが、なかなかいい作品だった。
その後８６年、彼はルーサー・ヴァンドロスとデュエット曲「ゼアリズ・ナッシング・ベター・ザン・ラヴ」を録音する。これは、ブラックチャートでナンバーワンを記録。初めてグレゴリーの歌を聞いた。意外といい声で、ルーサーとの相性もよかった。二人とも生粋のニューヨーカー。
そして、９０年代に入ってグレゴリー・ハインズが来日して、その公演を渋谷のパルコシアターで見た。パルコシアターは小さくて、あの時は前から何番目かのけっこういい席だった。その目の前であのグレゴリーがタップダンスを踊る。生のタップダンスを見たのはあの時が初めてだった。圧倒された。真っ暗な広いステージに彼だけがぽつりと立っている。そこに一本のスポットライトがあたっている。そしておもむろに踊りだす。
最初、どうしてあんなにかっこいい音が出るのか不思議だったが、床にマイクが仕込んであると後から聞いて納得した。タップを踊る靴、タップシューズが時々照明に当たって、その反射した光が一瞬僕の目に入った。グレゴリーのタップは、「粋」そのものだった。つまり、まったくなんら難しそうになく、軽くタップをやってしまうのだ。優雅で洗練されていた。たかがタップだけで、これだけ人の目を惹きつけることのすごさを思い知らされた。
今年見た『ブリング・ダ・ノイズ』https://www.soulsearchin.com/soul-diary/archive/200303/diary20030322.htmlでも、かなり圧倒されたが、その出演者たちも、グレゴリーにはリスペクトの気持ちを表していた。
今、ルーサーとのデュエット曲を聴いている。そして、ライオネルの「セイ・ユー、セイ・ミー」を聴いて、彼に追悼の意を表しよう。
今日書こうと思った、映画「スタンド・バイ・ミー」の話、シンガー、AI（アイ）の話はまた明日以降に。
ENT>OBITUARY>HINES, GREGORY
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Gregory Hines, Tony Award Winner, Dies at 57
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at Aug 10, 2003 12:32 p.m. ET
(Aug 11, 1:32 a.m. JST)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gregory Hines, the greatest tap dancer of his generation who also transcended the stage with successful film and television roles, has died at 57.
Hines died Saturday in Los Angeles of cancer, publicist Allen Eichorn said Sunday.
Hines won a 1992 Tony for the musical “Jelly’s Last Jam.” He first became internationally known as part of a jazz tap duo with his brother, Maurice. The two danced together in the musical revue “Eubie!” in 1978.
The brothers later performed together in Broadway’s “Sophisticated Ladies” and on film in 1984’s “The Cotton Club.”
In “The Cotton Club,” Hines also had a lead acting role, which led to more work in film. He starred with Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1985’s “White Nights” and with Billy Crystal in 1986’s “Running Scared,” and he appeared with Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett in 1995’s “Waiting to Exhale,” among other movies.
On television, he had his own sitcom in 1997 called “The Gregory Hines Show,” as well as a recurring role on “Will and Grace.” Last March, he appeared in the spring television series “Lost at Home.”
Gregory Oliver Hines was born on February 14, 1946, in New York City. He has said his mother urged him and his older brother toward tap dancing because she wanted them to have a way out of the ghetto.
When he was a toddler, he said, his brother was already taking tap lessons and would come home and teach him steps. They began performing together when Gregory Hines was five, and they performed at the Apollo for two weeks when he was six. In 1954 they were cast in the Broadway musical “The Girl in Pink Tights,” starring French ballerina Jeanmaire.
“I don’t remember not dancing,” Hines said in a 2001 interview with The Associated Press. “When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance.”
Paired with his brother Maurice, he was a professional child star. In his teens, joined by their father, Maurice Sr., on drums, they were known as Hines, Hines and Dad. Later he earned Tony nominations on Broadway in “Eubie,” “Comin’ Uptown” and “Sophisticated Ladies.” He won a Tony for best actor in a musical playing jazz legend “Jelly Roll” Morton in “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
There was a time, he said, when he didn’t want to dance. He was in his mid-20s, “a hippie” in a brief moment of rebellion, he said in 2001.
“I felt that I didn’t want to be in show business anymore. I felt that I wanted to be a farmer,” he said with a laugh. Invited to work on a farm in upstate New York, he quickly learned a lesson. Beginning before dawn, “I was milking cows and shoveling terrible stuff and working all day. By the end of the day all I wanted was my tap shoes — I thought, `What am I doing? I better get back where I belong on the stage where we work at night and can sleep late!”’
Hines had a falling out with his older brother in the late 1960s because the younger was becoming influenced by counter-culture and wanted to perform to rock music and write his songs. In 1973, the family act disbanded and Hines moved to Venice Beach.
“I was going through a lot of changes,” Hines told the Washington Post in 1981. “Marriage. We’d just had a child. Divorce. I was finding myself.”
He returned to New York in 1978, partly to be near his daughter, Daria, who was living with Hines’ first wife, dance therapist Patricia Panella. His brother, with whom he had reconciled, told him about an audition for the Broadway-bound “The Last Minstrel Show.” He got the part, but the show opened and closed in Philadelphia.
Hines landed his first film role in the 1981 Mel Brooks comedy “History of the World Part I,” in which he played a Roman slave as a last-minute replacement for Richard Pryor.
Hines’ has been nominated for a number of Emmy Awards, most recently in 2001 for his lead role in the mini-series “Bojangles.” His PBS special “Gregory Hines: Tap Dance in America” was nominated in 1989, and in 1982 he was nominated for his performance in “I Love Liberty,” a variety special saluting America.
He also won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1999 for his work as the voice of “Big Bill” in the Bill Cosby animated TV series “Little Bill” and NAACP Image Awards for “Bojangles” and “Running Scared.”