Jimmy Hoskins, longtime dancer and choreographer, dies

Sarasota lost a veritable dancing and theatrical legend this past weekend. Vibrant dancing fixture, artist and jovial personality Jimmy Hoskins has died. He was 79 years old.

“He’s worked with so many different organizations in town that he’s a beloved and legendary figure in Sarasota,” says Michael Donald Edwards, producing artistic director of Asolo Repertory Theatre. “He was a legend already when I arrived at the Asolo and he was a beautiful and talented man who loved life.”

Hoskins life journey was dedicated to dance and performance. As staff choreographer for the Asolo Repertory Theatre and an adjunct faculty member at the Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training for over 25 years, Hoskins taught students and actors for years how to move and the thorough joys of dancing.

Hoskins dance journey began as a child in St. Louis where he studied tap dancing and emulated his silver screen dance icons. According to Hoskins, he was so entranced with movie musicals that he would walk the two miles between his local movie theater and his house practicing the dance moves he just saw up on the screen. He watched “Singin’ in the Rain” a reportedly 32 times and took a job at the movie theater so he didn’t have to keep paying admission.

He took that unbridled passion and dedication to dance to Drury University in Springfield, MO. Hoskins majored in art while continuing his dance studies in ballet, tap and jazz. He used his growing dance prowess to become a ballroom dance instructor back in St. Louis. There he partnered with popular local dancer Reina, Queen of the Mambo, and developed a Latin dance act that toured in hotels and nightclubs throughout the city.

The tour with Reina led to an audition as a member of screen legend Mae West’s “Muscle Man” revue. After performing with West as a swing dancer in production in California. Once the production closed, Hoskins hitchhiked back home to Missouri and soon joined the Army. He had attended college, joined Mae West, traveled through the western United States and joined the army all by the age of 19. He had only just begun.

While an enlisted man, Hoskins’ dancing talents were employed to good use by the military. He was a member in the “Fifth Army Soldier Show” that was filmed in Chicago and broadcast to encourage recruitment into the armed forces. The show and his talent caught the attention of military and entertinament talent scouts, which led to performing for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

From there the stories and accomplishments of Hoskins reads like a wonderful story. Over the years he had such varied jobs as a choreographer in New York City, teaching period movement at Pennsylvania State University, and even as a nude dancer in the La Nouvelle Eve club in Paris.

Dancer, author (penned his memoirs “Our Hearts Were Khaki and Gay”), and consummate lover of life, Hoskins was Sarasota’s bright and luminous crown of all things dance and performance.

“I’m mostly going to remember his contagious laughter,” says Edwards, “and his willingness and ability to change ideas and come up with a new one right on the spot. He kept dancing and choreographing until he couldn’t walk anymore. He never stopped creating.”