Harriet Browne (dancer)

Browne was born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois to her parents Ruby and Reuben Jordan. Her entire immediate family was musically inclined as her mother was a hotel worker and amateur musician; her father was a pharmacist, shoe salesman, and self-taught dancer; and her elder sister, Marquita, was a singer.

Browne's interest in dance stemmed from watching tap performances at Chicago's Regal Theater and from learning from her father who was a specialist in Snake Hips dancing. As a preteen, she started taking jazz and rhythm lessons from the Bruce Sisters.

By the age of fifteen, she was performing in many of Chicago's nightclubs alongside her sister. This act, where her sister sang and Browne tap danced, was known as the Jordan Sisters. Browne also booked jobs alone in nightclubs such as Club DeLisa, NRA Theatre, and Robert's Show Club.[4] Her ultimate goal was to become a chorus line dancer—a feat difficult for an African American to achieve.

The daughter of Reuben Jordan, pharmacist and shoe salesman, and Ruby Jordan, hotel worker, she was born Harriet Jordan in Chicago. She was exposed to music and dance by her family from a young age and liked to listen to jazz. She dropped out of high school when she was fifteen to find employment as a dancer.

In the early 1950s, Browne left Chicago to pursue chorus line dancing in New York City. As many nightclubs only hired white dancers, it was difficult for Browne to find consistent work. However, she did perform in the chorus lines at Club Savannah in Greenwich Village.

Her tap choreography also earned her a place in various variety shows and nightclubs. Over the course of her career, she tapped alongside the Cab Calloway Band, Flip Wilson, Betty Carter, Dinah Washington, Della Reese, and T-bone Walker. She also had the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall with Gregory Hines and Bunny Briggs.[5]

Browne took a 15-year break from dancing around the 1960s to mid-1970s. It wasn't until Barbara Klien, the artistic director of the Bronx Dance Theater, heard about Browne from a student that she encouraged Browne to take up dancing again.[6]

While working towards a certification from Dance Educators of America, Browne worked as a tap teacher at the Bronx Dance Theater. She devised the syllabus for the Theater's tap program. With this experience, she went on to form her own dance studio, the Aristaccato Tap Company in the early 1990s. The company focused on teaching jazz and tap dance to underprivileged youths in the Bronx.

Browne also became the youngest member of The Silver Belles, an African American dance troupe based in Harlem, New York and made up of former chorus line dancers.

One of Browne's most well-known pupils is Michelle Dorrance.

Browne was well known for her incredibly fast, improvisational tap dancing on sand. By sprinkling a thin layer of sand over a wooden board, the rhythms of her tap shoes could be both "enhanced and softened."[7] Although she didn't invent the style, she became known as one of the best. Gregory Hines once called her “the world's greatest female sand dancer”.[4]

This is where her nickname, “Quicksand”, originated.

Browne died on September 1, 1997, at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.[7] Although her exact cause of death was not revealed, it is known that she suffered from muscle spasms and psoriasis for many years before her death.[6]

• 1995-1996: Received Choreographer's Fellowship from National Endowment for the Arts
• 1996: Honored for her choreography at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Alice Tully Hall on National Tap Dance Day
• 1997: Recognized as one of the “Great Dancing Ladies of Harlem” by the International Women in Jazz organization[8]
• 2016: Inducted into American Tap Dance Foundation’s International Tap Dance Hall of Fame