Hinton Battle, three-time Tony winner in musicals, dies at 67

Hinton Battle, a dazzling dancer who won the first of his three Tony Awards in 1981 for his performance in the Duke Ellington musical revue “Sophisticated Ladies” after learning to tap dance in the weeks leading up to opening night, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 67.

His death in a hospital was confirmed by Leah Bass-Baylis, a spokeswoman for the family, who danced with him on Broadway. She did not give a reason.

“Some people are born with the spirit of dance,” he said Debbie Allen, the dancer, choreographer and actress, who is Mr. Battle had known him since he was sixteen. “Hinton Battle was such a person.” She added: “He was just technically superior to anyone who came close to him. He had rhythm and style. You were looking at a supernova.”

Mr. Battle auditioned for “Sophisticated Ladies” at age 18 after originating the role of the Scarecrow in “The Wiz,” the all-black adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz.” didn't know how to tap and felt pressure to be in a show with virtuoso tappers like Gregory Hines and Gregg Burge.

At his audition, Mr. Battle said he botched a soft shoe routine.

“I panicked,” he told The New York Times in 1984. 'In the past you didn't have to know how to tap. The tap was turned off for so long, and there was not much to see.”

He took intensive lessons from Henry LeTang, one of the show's choreographers and a longtime master tap teacher, before and during his time on the show. The guardianship paid off.

In The Boston Globe, critic Kevin Kelly wrote that Mr. Battle “manages to stand out – by which I mean separate himself – from the ensemble whenever he gets the chance.”

He added: “His dancing is full of dazzle.”

After winning the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical, Mr. Battle took the statue to his mother's house in Washington, DC In a scene captured by The Washington Post in 1981 she loosened the strings on the small bag and removed the Tony.

“Ah, beautiful!” she said happily, adding, “Can I keep it?”

“You can have the nomination plaque, but not the Tony,” Mr. Battle said. “That's mine.”

Over the next decade, he won two more Tony Awards for Lead Actor in a Musical – a record in the category – in “The Tap Dance Kid,” as Dipsey Bates, an aspiring Broadway dancer and choreographer who challenges the show business ambitions of world stimulates. title character, and later in “Miss Saigon.”

In his review of “The Tap Dance Kid” in The Times in 1983, Frank Rich wrote that Mr. Battle “can perform so many tap variations that the sounds of his feet become a percussion symphony.”

Ben Vereenthe actor and dancer known for his Tony-winning performance in the musical “Pippin,” saw Mr. Battle for the first time in 'The Tap Dance Kid'.

“Hinton's movement expression was an inside job,” Mr. Vereen said in a telephone interview. “Nothing was mechanical to him. It was a feeling. If it comes from within, it is authentic.”

For the Tony-winning performance of Mr. Battle in “Miss Saigon” in 1991, no dancing was necessary. He played John, a Marine who introduces the show's doomed lovers — his sergeant friend and a Vietnamese barmaid — and later becomes an advocate for the abandoned children of American servicemen and local women. In the song 'Bui Doi' he makes a powerful plea for compassion for children.

“I'm a mess after singing that song — but only my dresser sees that,” he told The Associated Press in 1991.

Hinton Govorn Battle Jr. was born on November 29, 1956 in Neubrücke, West Germany, where his father, who was in the U.S. Army, was stationed. His mother, Carrie (Griffin) Battle, was an accounting supervisor. Hinton, his two sisters, Lettie and Eddie Battle – his only survivors – and two brothers grew up in Washington.

Hinton danced at home and in an elementary school production of “The Nutcracker” before studying ballet at the Jones-Hayward School at age 10. He earned a scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York at age 13 and stayed there for about three years before returning to Washington. But he soon returned to New York to audition for “The Wiz” at the suggestion of his sister Lettie, who was a chorus dancer on the show.

When “The Wiz” was in its pre-Broadway tryout in Philadelphia in late 1974, director Geoffrey Holder picked Mr. Battle from the chorus to play the Scarecrow, replacing the much older one Stu Gilliam, who had become ill. After opening on Broadway, dance critic Emory Lewis of The Record of Hackensack, NJ, wrote that Mr. Battle “moved with the grace of Ray Bolger,” referring to the actor and dancer who played the Scarecrow in the 1939 film “The Wizard of The Wizard.”

Mr. Battle spent about two years with “The Wiz,” then returned to ballet school and performed with the Lyric Opera Ballet Company in Chicago and the Dance Theater of Harlem. But Broadway beckoned again, and he worked as a substitute performer in Bob Fosse's revue “Dancin'” before joining the original cast of “Sophisticated Ladies” in 1981.

In 1983, Mr. Battle Cleavant Derricks in the role of soul singer James (Thunder) Early in “Dreamgirls”, which is roughly based on the story of the Supremes. He left later that year to begin rehearsals for 'The Tap Dance Kid'. Besides “Miss Saigon,” his other Broadway role — taking over for James Naughton in 1997 — was as the cheerfully unscrupulous lawyer Billy Flynn in the musical revival of “Chicago.”

Mr. Battle also choreographed ballets at the Baltimore School for the Arts, as well as routines for the singers Anita Baker and Sister Sledge, and he collaborated with Ms. Allen, the dancer, on two Academy Awards shows. In 2006, he choreographed the Outkast film musical 'Idlewild' (2006) and the Off Broadway show 'The Evil Dead: The Musical'.

He opened a dance academy in Japan in 2017, but it closed in 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic, partly due to his health problems.

Mr. Battle appeared in the film versions of “Sophisticated Ladies” (1982) and “Dreamgirls” (2006), although in “Dreamgirls” he played a different role than the one he played on Broadway.

One of his most memorable film performances was when he played a singing and dancing demon – with the power to force people to break out into song-and-dance numbers and confess their deepest secrets – in a 2001 musical episode of the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Dressed in a zoot suit, gaiters and a devil mask, a confident Mr. Battle tap through a scene in which he tells Dawn, Buffy's little sisterthat he is going to take her to another dimension, where he will make her his bride. Mr. Battle sings with talent:

I'm the hottest thing! I am the spin and shout!

If you gotta sing, if you gotta let it out!

You call me and I'll come running.

I turn on the music, I bring the fun in.

Now we're partying, that's what matters.