Tommy Tune Wins 2011 Helen Hayes Tribute Award

Tommy Tune has been announced as the 2011 recipient of the Helen Hayes Tribute Award. He will be honored at the 27th Helen Hayes Awards on April 25, at the Warner Theatre on Monday.

In 1965, Tune made his Broadway debut as a performer in the musical Baker Street. His first Broadway directing and choreography credits were for the original production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in 1978. He has gone on to direct or choreograph, or both, some eight Broadway musicals. He directed a new musical titled Turn of the Century, which premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago on September 19, 2008 and closed on November 2, 2008.

Off-Broadway, Tune has directed The Club and Cloud Nine. Tune toured the United States in The Sherman Brothers musical Busker Alley in 1994-1995 and in the stage adaptation of the film Dr. Doolittle in 2006. Tune is the only person to win Tony Awards in the same categories (Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical) in consecutive years (1990 and 1991), and the first to win in four different categories. He has won nine Tony Awards.

Tune's film credits include Hello, Dolly! (1969) and The Boy Friend with Twiggy (1971). Tune released his first record album, Slow Dancing, in 1997 on the RCA label, featuring a collection of his favorite romantic ballads. Tune has been performing in his musical revue, Steps in Time: A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance, in Boston in April 2008 and continuing in various venues from Bethesda, Maryland in January 2009 to California in February 2009.

A Helen Hayes Award is a theater award named for the famed actress Helen Hayes to recognize excellence in professional theater in the Washington, D.C. area since 1983. The awards are managed by Linda Levy Grossman and presented by the Washington Theatre Awards Society.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos