Alde Lewis recalls dancing on Broadway with Tommy Tune as his director and choreographer. As a young man he won a dance contest at Showtime at the Apollo. He spent a couple years on the road traveling with Cab Calloway. He was in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Cotton Club. He was the featured tap dancer in Big Deal, the last Broadway show Bob Fosse directed and choreographed.
Starting this week, his lengthy resume expands as he takes to the Ensemble stage to play the part of Daddy Bates, the grandfather to a 10-year-old girl (in this production) who wants to tap in Tony Award-winning The Tap Dance Kid written by Charles Blackwell, Henry Kreiger and Robert Lorick.
The two-act musical is jam-packed with family dysfunction. While Willi wants to tap like her mentor Uncle Dipsy, her lawyer father William has other plans for her. Meanwhile Willie’s sister Emma who does want to be an attorney and gets good grades in school, is ignored by her father. William browbeats his wife Ginnie, who Emma wants to stand up her dad. Dipsy is a tap dancer too and wants to be a choreographer.
But besides all the turmoil, there’s the tap dancing numbers that won the show acclaim on Broadway. (Fun fact: both Savion Glover and Dulé Hill danced the Willie role on Broadway.)
“My character is a spirit because throughout the whole piece I’m not really alive,” Lewis said. He’s in the minds of his children and especially his granddaughter, he said. “When I’m seen on stage it’s what’s going on in the minds of each.”
Willi (Zamira Williams) only knows of him, Lewis explained. “Everything being spoken is being spoken to give her a history about her grandad and my character is Daddy Bates.”
Directed by Kathryn Ervin, with musical direction by Phillip Hall and choreographed by Monica Josette, the other cast members include Hindolo Bongay, Alex Kennedy, Merritt Madison, April Wheat and Aisha Ussery.
Lewis says he is self-taught for the most part as a tap dancer. He had a few classes when he was young, he says, but they were part of the package that had him taking ballet as well. Growing up in Flint, Michigan, he says he entered a lot of dance contests and won them.
He moved to New York City and on a dare went to the Apollo and entered the dance contest and managed to win it. He caught the eye of the famous tapper Charles “Honi” Coles who encouraged him to take up tapping because of the “syncopation” he saw in Lewis’s dancing style.
“At one point I was considered one of the top tap dancers in the world. Eileen [Ensemble Theatre Artistic Director Eileen Morris] wanted to do The Tap Dance Kid because she knew that I was staying here in Houston now,” Lewis said.
Even though the Ensemble show is called The Tap Dance Kid, Lewis said “the major tapping in the show is going to be by Granddad.
“It’s a wonderful musical and a lot of kids will love the show. It’s a family show. So the adults are going to love it, they’ll be able to reminisce in terms of the the great tap dancers that they were able to watch on stage over the years.”
Performances are scheduled for June 27 through July 27 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at Ensemble Theatre, 3535 Main. For more information, call 713-520-0055 or visit ensemblehouston.com. $40-$65.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
