Funeral planned for Montreal tap dance legend whose memory lives on in her students – Montreal | 24CA News
Suzanne Bruneau is busy planning the funeral for her late mom, well-known Montreal faucet dancer Ethel Bruneau, who handed away final week at age 87.
“She was the queen of tap,” Bruneau instructed Global News. “The queen of tap in Montreal and Quebec and Canada.
It’s something she says the pastor who will be officiating at her funeral discovered when doing his research.
“When he called me he was like, ‘Oh, we’re celebrating Miss Swing,’ and I said, ‘Indeed, we are.’”
It’s a nickname Ethel earned whereas travelling throughout the province performing within the ’70s to varied audiences no matter background or language, Suzanne remembers.
“They would say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Swing,’ you know, and when you go in a lot of these places, ‘Miss Swing, chante les blues, chante les blues,’ ” Bruneau laughed.
Ethel launched faucet dancing to many in Montreal after arriving from Harlem, New York for a three-week dancing gig in 1953. She ended up staying and started educating faucet dancing within the Nineteen Sixties. Former college students say she was a drive to reckon with.
“Try to tell her what to do,” stated former pupil {and professional} faucet dancer Travis Knights, bursting out laughing. “She would put that smack down on you so quick. Oh, it’s great. I’m going to miss that.”
Yet she was cherished and welcoming, he and different former pupils level out.
“Oh, Ethel,” recalled Knights, smiling. “Ethel is a fiery person, irascible, kind, lovely, loved, loved, loved, loved tap dance. All things tap dance.”
Those she taught included her personal youngsters, grandkids — even nice grandkids.
“Oh, I miss her so much,” stated granddaughter Makeda Philip, weeping, as Bruneau, her mom, hugged her.
For Philip, Ethel was like was a second mother.
“You know, every summer I’d spend time with her and my grandfather,” she stated, smiling by way of tears, “and they would keep me for the weekend and give my mom some free time.”
Bruneau says Ethel was a unifier, a life trainer and like a godmother to all her college students.
The artist gained a number of awards together with the inaugural Prix Ethel Bruneau from Prix de la Danse de Montréal in 2020, and was named to the Dance Collection Danse Hall of Fame a yr later.
A funeral can be held 1pm Aug. 20 at Maison Darche in Brossard, on Montreal’s south shore.
