Ernest Brownie Brown, a vaudeville entertainer and a founding member of a tap dance ensemble called the Copasetics that helped keep the dance style alive long after its golden age, died of prostate cancer Aug. 21 at a nursing home in Burbank, Ill. He was 93.

An impish spitfire of a performer, Brown teamed with Charlie Cookie Cook about 1930 to create a comedy, tumbling and tap dance act that shared stages with Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and other leading entertainers. Cook and Brown, as the partnership was called, headlined shows at Harlems Cotton Club, the Palladium in London and the Latin Casino in Paris.

Brown, not quite 5 feet tall, was the mischievous clown, while the tall and lanky Cook, known for his Russian floor dancing, played the straight-laced grouch. Often their shows featured Brown being tossed around like a rag doll and falling to the ground, only to finish in an impressive pose.

Brownie can fall like a champion, Cook, who died in 1991, once told an interviewer. Authors Marshall and Jean Stearns wrote in their book Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968) that Cook and Browns act looks like bone-crushing mayhem, but it is actually carefully rehearsed dancing and acrobatics, with tiny Brown emerging triumphant at stage center in the finale doing a wildly satirical version of the twist.

Last year, the team of Cook and Brown was inducted into the American Tap Dance Foundations Tap Dance Hall of Fame.