For Throwback Thursday, thanks to @tapdancearchiveproductions and @livinthetaplife for introducing us to who Will Gaines is! What an incredible dancer... Read all below to learn about Will Gaines! 🤗🤗🤗 ・・・・・・ #Repost @livinthetaplife (@get_repost) ・・・ #ThursdayTapThrowback: This is Will Gaines (1928-2014). Born in Baltimore and raised in Detroit, Will saw the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras, master swing orchestra, but was most impressed with the bebop style of Dizzy Gillespie. When he saw young bebop #rhythmtap virtuoso Teddy Hale dance, he dedicated himself to performing the improvisational bebop style. In the 1950s, Gaines worked with jazz greats Lucky Thompson, Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, and Sonny Stitt at New York's Apollo Theatre. In 1957, he joined Cab Calloway's orchestra and Martha Ray's Night Club in Miami, and also danced in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., for President Dwight Eisenhower. He opened at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and went on to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Buffalo, New York. Gaines made London his home in the 1960s, appearing at several venues, from concerts halls to countless street appearances alongside major names of British jazz. He was the first American jazz #hoofer to perform at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. In 1983, Gaines appeared in “Masters of Tap” with tap masters Charles “Honi” Coles and Chuck Green, recorded at Riverside Studios in London. In 2005, when he was nearing eighty, Gaines was a featured performer in Cross Currents: Turned On Tap at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at South Bank Centre in London, in which he performed with English, Irish, and American #tapdancers. He received rave reviews for his career as a rhythm #tapdancer. After his death five years ago, Gaines is still regarded as one of America's great ambassadors of jazz #tapdance. This is Will on the Arthur Haynes Show in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Credits to @tapdancearchiveproductions for the clip! https://www.instagram.com/p/By83efRA2os/?igshid=mjzcbh0o5u4h