Hope Clarke Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic Hope Clarke, the actress, singer, dancer and frequent George C. Wolfe collaborator who received a Tony Award nomination for choreographing the electric 1990s musical Jelly’s Last Jam, has died. She was 85.
Clarke died Thursday at her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, of complications from a cancerous brain tumor, family member Donelle Chisolm told The Hollywood Reporter.
Early in her career, Clarke was a principal dancer for companies led by Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey, and she performed six times on Broadway from 1960-85.
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On the big screen, she played an inner-city schoolteacher in Sidney Poitier’s A Piece of the Action (1977) and the mother of Jeffrey Wright’s Jean-Michel Basquiat in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat (1996).
She was hired by Wolfe to handle the choreography on Jelly’s Last Jam, which opened on Broadway in April 1992, ran for more than 560 performances and was nominated for 11 Tonys, including best musical. Tap-dance sensation Gregory Hines and Tonya Pinkins won Tonys for their performances.
She and Wolfe worked together on nearly a dozen plays and musicals, also including Broadway’s Caroline, or Change in 2004 and A Free Man of Color in 2010-11.
The younger of two sisters, Clarke was born in Washington on March 23, 1941. She studied dance at the Alma Davis Dance School and with Doris W. Jones’ ballet company. After graduating from Spingarn High School, she joined the touring company of West Side Story in 1959 in Chicago and accompanied the production for a return engagement on Broadway.
She appeared again on Broadway in 1961 alongside Brock Peters and Robert Guillaume in Kwamina, choreographed by Agnes de Mille, and in 1967-68 with Robert Hooks and Leslie Uggams in Hallelujah, Baby!, winner of the Tony for best musical.
She also danced in Antony and Cleopatra for the Metropolitan Opera, appeared off-Broadway in Douglas Turner Ward’s The Reckoning for the Negro Ensemble Company and returned to Broadway in 1970 for Purlie and in 1972 for Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.
She showed up on television over the years on episodes of such shows as N.Y.P.D., The Jeffersons, Good Times, What’s Happening!!, Three’s Company, The White Shadow, Hill Street Blues and Law & Order.
In 1995, Clarke directed a Houston Grand Opera production of Porgy and Bess that toured America and played in Italy and Japan. She was the first African American to handle a major U.S. staging of the beloved opera.
“As a director, I guess I bring in the female sensibilities,” she said in an interview that year. “Since I’m also an actress, I’ve really tried to develop the characterizations so that the performers don’t do a little singing here and some acting there. And coming from a Black perspective, I know how we think, how we feel, what we do. I understand the little things. That makes a difference.”
Clarke also co-founded the 5 Plus Ensemble, which celebrates and showcases dancers over age 50.
She and her sister in October had moved from New Jersey to Murfreesboro, where they were cared for by Chisolm. She also is survived by her nephew, Joseph, and great-nephew, Jaydon. A life celebration is set for Sept. 5.
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