Mr. Aguilar, known as Cuban Pete, translated his footwork as a boxer and his childhood tap-dance training into a rhythmically complex, visually arresting dancing style that electrified audiences at the Palladium, the premier showcase for Latin music in the 1940s and 1950s.
I have done a lot of tap dance but I've had no formal dance training.
The program, he told The Huffington Post, included voice, drama and dance training, but the tap lessons are what truly captured him.
If it was tap dancing, he'd take tap dance.
I did that onstage many years ago and I've been in comedies and musicals, and my training was dance and tap dance.
Combining his own extensive training in ballet with tap dance, modern dance and folkloric dance traditions from around the world, he created a new, fluidly integrated art form he liked to call "freestyle dance".
Image caption: Above: Many of the cast members have some dance training, making for beautiful ballet and tap interludes.
"They had a great time on the trains, drinking, telling stories, stars like Jimmy Cagney would sing and tap dance," Mr. Thomas recalled.
I tap dance between meals.
