Dianne Walker

1951–

Dancer, dance educator

A mentor to tap dance luminary Savion Glover and an impressive dancer herself, Dianne "Lady Di" Walker has been a link between the classic age of tap dancing and its modern revival and development. One of a small but growing number of women to attain international recognition in the tap field, Walker studied with tap masters Leon Collins and Jimmy Slyde. Her dancing was featured in two of the key productions that rekindled interest in tap in the 1980s and 1990s: the film Tap, starring dancer Gregory Hines, and the stage revue Black and Blue. A tireless promoter of tap dancing, Walker has been richly honored for her contributions to the form.

Walker was born in Boston in 1951, and when she was two years old she became one of many individuals stricken by the childhood scourge of polio, a virus plaguing children that caused temporary, and sometimes permanent, paralysis until a vaccine was introduced in 1955. To rebuild her daughter's strength, Walker's mother enrolled her in dance classes after the debilitating disease. The plan worked—and it uncovered a passion for dance in the very young Walker. Taking instruction from Boston teacher Mildred Kennedy Bradic, Walker was enthusiastic about dance of all kinds, from ballet to jazz. But it was tap that she liked the most, especially after seeing the legendary dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson on television.

Taught Dance on Air Force Base

Many years passed before Walker could fulfill her dreams of becoming a dancer. Her father was in the United States Air Force, and the family soon left Boston for Edwards Air Force Base in the Southern California desert. Living there for five years, Walker taught dance classes on Saturday mornings to younger children. Her father's military career later took her to the Pacific island of Okinawa. Back in the United States, she earned an education degree from Boston University and an education master's from Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She married her husband Rodney, and the couple had two children. In 1978 she was getting ready to enroll in law school, but her life changed when she attended a community event at a Prince Hall Masonic temple and met Willy "Prince" Spencer, an old vaudeville dancer there.

"He was interesting on all levels—interesting to look at, interesting to talk to, interesting to watch dance," Walker recalled in an interview broadcast on The Connection, on Boston radio station WBUR. Spencer suggested that she take lessons from Leon Collins, a famed tap dancer who still gave lessons at a Brookline studio. Few young dancers, and even fewer young women, were taking up tap in those years, but Walker was instantly hooked. "I knew from the moment I walked into his studio that I had found something that just made me happy," she told Jeni Tu of DanceTeacher magazine. "I had never felt such a connection to something, and that thing was connected to this wonderful family of people."

The "wonderful family of people" she mentioned was the community of tap dancers, several of whom were active in the Boston area. Walker studied not only with Collins but also with Jimmy Slyde, and through them she met earlier female tap dancers like Jeni LeGon, Marion Coles, Mabel Lee, and Harriet Brown. "These people I met were like a family, a really close family," she told Tu. "There's a lot of sharing, and wherever there's sharing there's a lot of compassion, a lot of love."

Took Over Dance Studio

Walker began to take over some of Collins's classes, and in 1985 she made her solo debut at a tap festival in Rome, Italy. "I gave you everything I had. I held nothing back," the dying Collins told Walker (as she recounted it to Carol Stocker of the Boston Globe). "Then he asked, 'Do you know what you're going to do in Rome next week? You dance for me.' And he was crying." Collins died three days later, and Walker made a triumphant debut before an audience of 2,000. Walker and another Collins student took over his Brookline studio, and Walker became its director.

She was coming on the tap scene at a propitious time. The decline of movie musicals in the 1960s and 1970s had dented the form's popularity, but by the mid-1980s a new generation, abroad as well as in the United States, had rediscovered it. She appeared in both the Paris and Broadway productions of Black and Blue, a revue celebrating the artistic achievements of African-American expatriates in Paris in the 1920s, and she was a featured shim-sham dancer in Tap, the 1989 film that did much to reintroduce tap dancing to mainstream audiences and to kick off a wave of troupes and films devoted to tap and other virtuoso popular dance forms. For the Broadway version of Black and Blue she served as assistant choreographer and dance captain. Considering herself a jazz percussionist of a sort, Walker frequently toured jazz clubs and festivals starting in the 1990s.

Mentored Savion Glover

One of Walker's co-stars in both Black and Blue and Tap was Savion Glover, who was 11 years old at the time. As Glover was appearing on the Sesame Street children's program and introducing yet another new generation to tap, Walker was becoming his mentor. Glover has referred to Walker affectionately as "Aunt Dianne," but a more frequent nickname that takes note of her elegant, seemingly almost effortless routines—her upper body seems almost not to move at all as her feet execute difficult patterns—is "Lady Di."

Keeping up a busy schedule of appearances as a dancer, Walker left the Collins studio in 1997 and became a full-time teacher on her own. She has held guest teaching positions at numerous prestigious colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Williams College, and the University of Michigan. Increasingly, she has turned her attention to the further popularization and expansion of tap dancing. Beginning in 1996 she served on the board of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and she participated in the Dance USA Task Force on Dance Education.

"We did a damn good job!" Walker exclaimed to DanceTeacher, reflecting on the new generation of tap dancers she and other teachers had trained. "I'm happy when I see what's going on and what the level of dancing is in schools across the country." But, she said, young dancers needed more outlets for their talents. "I would like to see a tap dance company on the level of American Ballet Theatre, or Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater or Dance Theatre of Harlem. Or, I'd like to see the DTH and Alvin Ailey include tap dance. We've been so busy teaching that we don't have the business side together," she told DanceTeacher.

At a Glance …

Born in 1951 in Boston, MA; father was a member 'of the U.S. Air Force; grew up partly at Edwards Air Force Base, CA, and in Okinawa; married Rodney Walker; children: Michelle, Michael. Education: Boston University, BA, education; Antioch University, Yellow Springs, OH, MA, education; studied tap with Leon Collins, Brookline, MA.

Career: Worked at mental health clinic, late 1970s; professional dancer, 1985–; Leon Collins Dance Studio, director, 1985–97; performed in jazz clubs and at jazz festivals, 1990s and 2000s; World Tap Dance Championships, Dresden, Germany, adjudicator, 1996; independent dance teacher, 1997–.

Selected memberships: Massachusetts Cultural Council, member, 1996–2004.

Selected awards: Living Treasure in American Dance award, Oklahoma City University, 1998; Savion Glover Award for "Keeping the Beat Alive," 2000; Flo-Bert Award, New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day, 2003; Humanitarian Award, Debbie Allen Dance Academy, 2004; Hoofers Award, Tap City, New York, 2004.

Addresses: Home—Mattapan, MA.

Walker's venerated status in the tap world was recognized with a slew of honors. In 1998 she became the first woman given the Living Treasure in American Dance Award from Oklahoma City University, and in 2003 she received the Flo-Bert Award (named for legendary stage performers Florence Mills and Bert Williams) from the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day. In 2004, Walker received the Hoofers Award from New York's Tap City group. Early in the following year, Walker toured nationally with Glover and Jimmy Slyde. Her dance career was far from over. "If I never tapped again and walked out the door right now, I would feel such as sense of accomplishment," she told DanceTeacher. But, she conceded, "I can't even find the door."

Selected works

Black and Blue (Broadway revue), 1989.
Tap (film), 1989.
Tap Dance in America (television documentary), 1989.
Honi Coles: The Class Act of Tap (documentary), 1994.
JUBA: Masters of Tap & Percussive Dance (television documentary), 1998.

Sources

Periodicals

Boston Globe, April 8, 1989, p. 9.

Boston Herald, May 24, 1997, p. 19; August 21, 1999, p. 27.

Dance Magazine, October 2003, p. 103; February 2005, p. 76.

DanceTeacher, January 2003.

Houston Chronicle, January 18, 2001, p. 10; January 22, 2001, p. 10.

New York Times, December 29, 1997, p. E1.

On-line

"Dianne Walker," Tap Dance, www.tapdance.org/tap/people/tapbios2.htm#DWALKER (April 6, 2006).

"Pioneering Dancer Tapped to Perform on Campus," Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice.2005/arts-walker-0330.html (April 6, 2006).

Other

Additional material for this profile was taken from an interview with DianneWalker broadcast on The Connection, on radio station WBUR in Boston, March 29, 2005.