Appreciation: Gregory Hines, watching the divine

Crisis, The, Sep/Oct 2003 by Wolfe, George C

I never truly understood what a star was until I worked with Gregory Hines. And it has nothing to do with having your name above the title or how many travel in your entourage or how many assistants you eat alive.

It has to do with a certain kind of effortlessness.

Once in Salvador, the capital of Bahia in Brazil, I was bobbing my head to the music as Black/Negro/Colored/African Americans are want to do. I looked around the room and realized I was the only one doing so. Everybody else, in a brilliant display of contrapuntal rhythmic virtuosity, was effortlessly moving their legs, arms, hips and behinds, but not their heads. I was to find out later that in Condomble, the African religion the slaves brought to Brazil, the Orishas, or spirits, enter the body through the head. And if one is busily bobbing one's head, how can a spirit land?

That's exactly what Gregory Mines did. He took the effort out of the execution, thereby allowing that which was divine to enter his body when he performed. And that's what made him a star.

I always hate it when people say, "He was the last of..." But in Mines' case it's true. he was the last of a certain breed of artist and performer. He could sing, dance, act, charm, dazzle, seduce and take charge of an audience with such ease.

My time working with him on Jelly's Last Jam, for which he won a Tony award in 1992, was a truly intense collaboration. There were fights. There were confrontations. There was even a showdown or two. Or three. Yet with each battle, with each contretemps, came a deeper understanding and a deeper respect of what the other brought into the room. Yet, with each battle came a very intense kind of love. I believe that when we attend the theater and are deeply affected by what we see, those images enter our bodies and never leave us. To see Gregory Mines on stage was truly wondrous. His grace, his command, his elegance, his fragility and his heart lived in every moment. How can a force like that not enter our bodies and never leave? To watch him as an artist was a truly divine experience. To know him as a man was an exhilarating gift. His spirit lingers in all who knew and loved him.

George C. Wolfe is a playwright, director and the producer of The Public Theater in New York.