Background
Born in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan, LeTang was the second son of Clarence, born in Dominica, and his wife Marie, who emigrated from Saint Croix.
Born in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan, LeTang was the second son of Clarence, born in Dominica, and his wife Marie, who emigrated from Saint Croix.
The couple owned and operated a radio and phonograph repair shop. At the age of seventeen, he opened his first studio, one small room with a piano. Over the ensuing decades he taught and/or worked with a multitude of entertainment personalities, including Lena Horne, Betty Hutton, Billie Holiday, Eleanor Powell, Lola Falana, Peter Gennaro, Leslie Uggams, Joey Heatherton, Chita Rivera, Ben Vereen, Debbie Allen, Hinton Battle, Savion Glover, and the Hines brothers, Maurice and Gregory.
LeTang devised dance routines for the Broadway musicals My Dear Public and Dream with Music in the mid-1940s, but his first cr as a full-fledged choreographer was the 1952 revue Shuffle Along with Eubie Blake.
LeTang was also recently inducted into the "International Tap Dance Hall of Fame" in 2015
LeTang"s screen credits include Francis Ford Coppola"s The Cotton Club (1984) and Tap (1989). Foreign television he choreographed The Garry Moore Show for seven years, staged the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon numerous times, and created dance routines for George Balanchine and Milton Berle.
His last project was the Showtime bio-film Bojangles in 2001. In the years prior to his death, he resided in Las Vegas, Nevada, teaching master classes from his home studio and travelling several times a year to hold classes in New York City.
Henry LeTang also lived in Airmont (Monsey), New York, in the 1980s and 1990s.
He died of natural causes in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the age of 91.