Art

Dule Hill hits Broadway as star in the Harlem golden era musical After Midnight

It’s been almost a decade since Dulé Hill has danced on a Broadway stage. After starring in tap prodigy Savion Glover’s 1996 hit musical Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, Hill hung up his tap shoes and made it big on the small screen, starring first in the award-winning White House drama, The West Wing and then on USA’s quirky crime comedy Psych. But playing personal aides and private investigators hasn’t stopped Hill from busting out a little soft shoe every now and then. “I’m notorious for just dancing all the time,” says Hill. “Whether I’m on set, or in a store waiting on line—it’s what I do. It’s a part of me. Once a tap dancer, always a tap dancer.”

"There aren’t any gimmicks and there aren’t any tricks that we pull in the show. It’s just the artists and the art on stage."

That certainly seems to be true now that he’s back on Broadway in the new musical, After Midnight—a tap-heavy trip through Duke Ellington’s days at Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club. As the host of the show, Hill gets to do a little bit of everything: singing, dancing and, in the only speaking role, he weaves the words of jazz poet Langston Hughes through an intoxicating 90-minute series of unbelievably energized and exuberant song-and-dance vignettes. Standards like Stormy Weather, I’ve Got the World on a String and I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, are given snazzy new life by the Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars, a group of 17 musicians who, combined, have played with everyone from Ray Charles to Jay Z. And in the spirit of the real Cotton Club, a special guest star will cycle in and out of the show every few months; first up is Grammy and American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino. “There aren’t any gimmicks and there aren’t any tricks that we pull in the show,” says Hill, sipping hot tea in his dressing room. “It’s just the artists and the art on stage, whether it’s the sax player, the drummer, the singer, the dancer or the speaker. We’re not doing all this theater magic to distract you, and I love that.”

Despite Hill’s network star wattage, the Jamaican New Jersey native is the real thing on stage. He started dancing when he was just three years old at his mother’s dance studio. At 10, he was cast as Savion Glover’s understudy in the Broadway musical The Tap Dance Kid, about a lawyer’s son who dreams of being a tap dancer. He took over the lead role in the touring production alongside the Cotton Club dancer-turned-Hollywood movie star Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers. “He was my first hint of the Harlem renaissance and what that time period was,” says Hill. “I’m infatuated with how smooth and elegant and slick people were back then. People were refined. I feel like we’ve lost that a little bit. You ask me to put on some tails and a nice suit from that era and I’m like, ‘Yeah let’s do it.’” That, combined with the other dancers cast in After Midnight—many of whom Hill has known since he was a kid, like Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Jared Grimes and Daniel J. Watts—and he knew he had to put his tap shoes back on. “Once I saw those names I was like, ‘OK, I see where they’re going with this.’ When you have the chance to be around people who are really good at what they do, you want to jump at it. These opportunities don’t come around often.”

This one also happened to come around at the perfect time. After filming Psych: The Musical earlier this year, which will be the cult hit’s seventh (and rumored last) season finale, Hill had been feeling nostalgic for his dancing days. “We did the opening number in front of a live audience and I was like, ‘It would be really fun to do a musical again,’ and then After Midnight came along,” he says with a smile. And the experience has been just what the actor needed. “Whenever I get around tap dancers it’s always like a reset button—a nice way to touch back to home base.”