Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley 

(image source: http://bohemiajam.weebly.com/ )

I had been going down the list of "Leading Intellectuals" of the Harlem Renaissance in the Wikipedia article, but the rest of the people listed are poets and I think I will save that for April and National Poetry Month. So I am going to go back to where I left off when I started the posts on notable persons with Josephine Baker. I'll be going back to the dancers, choreographers, and other entertainers and doing choreographer Buddy Bradley today.

The Wikipedia article for Buddy Bradley is not very good so I searched for other information and found the following items:
http://buddybradley.taplegacy.org/biography/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/9091 (from the UK)
http://www.streetswing.com/histmai2/d2budbrd1.htm

The abridged version is that Buddy was born aproximately 1908 and moved to the state of New York due to the death of his mother when he was a teen. When he was of age, he moved to New York City and that was where he came into the dance industry even though he was self taught and not trained in any school. Because of his color, he was never given credit for the moves he created and taught to white dancers in shows so he relocated to Great Britain and there he found the credit and open respect he deserved.

I like what the UK link said in the short paragraph:
Great dance teachers are rarer than great performers but are often unknown outside the dance world. British dance's debt to teacher and choreographer Buddy Bradley is huge. He brought American attack and professionalism to English dance in 1930s musicals. The list of stars who worked with him, either training or working out their routines, is breathtaking. In England they included [Jack Buchanan] Jessie Matthews, Anna Neagle, Jack Hulbert, and Elsie Randolph and in America, Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. This rare article [shown in the link] gives an insight into his teaching and an idea of the respect in which he was held within the profession.
Sadly, the image in the link when enlarged is too small to read the article it mentions.