Bringing Back The Beat

By Heather Wisner  

Dianne Walker sounds off on the revival and current state of tap dance  

Tap dancer Dianne “Lady Di” Walker appeared in the movie Tap and the original Paris production of Black and Blue and served as assistant choreographer and dance captain of the Broadway version. She has been featured in the documentaries Songs Unwritten: Leon Collins; Honi Coles: The Class Act of Tap; Black and Blue; and Great Performances: Tap Dance in America. Walker holds a master’s degree in education and participated in the Dance USA/National Task Force on Dance Education. She has received multiple honors and grants and has served as an adjudicator for the World Tap Dance Championships.

Her latest ventures include artistic directorship of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project through 2010 and dancing in the touring show The Souls of Our Feet, which opened this fall and will run through 2008. We caught up with Walker this summer while she was appearing at the L.A. Tap Fest.

How did you get started as a tapper?

Dianne Walker: I started dancing at 2 1/2 years old—I had polio, and my mother wanted to make sure I got the right exercise. I danced in Boston with Mildred Kennedy; later on, we moved to Edwards Air Force Base. [Walker’s father was in the Air Force.] They made a deal with me that if I taught dance class in the teen club, I would get free Cokes. You can imagine how popular that made me! But then we moved to Okinawa and I got into cheerleading and drill team. I stopped dancing from about age 14 to 28.

When I moved back to Boston, I met Willie Spencer at the Masonic Temple’s Prince Hall [where Walker’s father-in- law was being honored]. He looked like a vaudevillian, an interesting, wonderful character. I said, “Oh, man, whatcha doin’?” He was doing some hambone, and it took me back to the rhythms I enjoyed as a child. He asked me to show him something, so I jumped up and did a time step. He started to fill my head with details of Boston dance history. When I met Willie, I knew that was my path back to dancing. He took me to see Leon Collins. We went to his studio and [Collins] said, “If you want to learn tap dance, you’re in the right place.”

I quickly went from taking one to two private classes a week, and my children were taking his kids’ class on Saturdays. One time he asked me to teach the kids’ class while he went to get a sandwich. I said I didn’t know how, but he said, “You know more than they do. Share it.” I taught from then on.

What was the field like then, and how has it changed?

DW: This was 1978—there weren’t too many people interested in tap at the time. I was working for the department of psychiatry at Boston University Medical Center; I had a real job with a paycheck and health insurance. I took a sabbatical. I had just gotten my master’s in education and I thought I would do dance as therapy. I had also planned to go to law school. But the more I got into the dance, I found out how much didn’t know. I fell in love with this community of people. Because we shared the joy of dance, things progressed from there.

Now we have youth ensembles that perform at tap festivals all over the world, but not then. I was forced into a professional life because, as Jackie Mason says, somebody’s got to do it. There were no audiences at that time, so from ’78 until now, we’ve done really well.

Why had tap lost its popularity, and what brought it back?

DW: I asked some of the old guys what happened. They said TV came in and killed it—it had really been a live performance. Actually, Honi Coles said Agnes de Mille killed it! She came in with Oklahoma on Broadway and changed how everyone thought about dance.

There were a handful of people who spearheaded the movement in the ’70s—it was generally dominated by men and middle-aged white women. I was the only black woman. There were women who had taken tap as kids, inspired by Shirley Temple. And in the ’70s, there were reruns on late-night TV, so people were seeing Broadway musicals, seeing all this wonderful dance, and I think that helped bring it back. I was part of a grassroots movement to revitalize the form. I found out who was behind Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and I rolled up my sleeves to bring back the popularity of tap, enlighten people about the art form, and give those dancers—Collins, Eddie Brown, the Nicholas Brothers, the Whitman Sisters, Louise Madison, and others—the accolades they deserved.

Who was your greatest influence?

DW: Leon Collins. He had a method. He had a series of routines, and how you advanced through that material depended on what you brought to the table as a dancer. He built the foundation. He died young, and before that, he said, “I gave you everything, and you don’t even know what you got.” It’s true. I did my own work, but people asked me to share his knowledge. I ran the Leon Collins Dance Studio in Brookline [MA, with CB Heatherington and Pamela Raff,] from 1982 to 1995.

What are the predominant tap styles today, and how would you describe them?

DW: There are a lot of contemporary styles, like funk, but they all basically go back to traditional tap dance. Many dancers are so well rounded now that they can dance to no music; they can put the funk on it; they can dance to a classical fugue or Charlie Parker. Good tap dancers can tap to anything because they understand rhythm and musicality.

What does it take to be a good dancer, and a good teacher?

DW: You have to understand music. These dancers are musicians as well, and the music changes the style. And you need the basics. A shuffle is a shuffle, but when you learn the basics, it’s your alphabet, and when you learn the alphabet, you can say any word in the dictionary, right?

As a teacher, you have to give the best of yourself in terms of sharing. I’m a passionate teacher—I’m passionate about what I’m doing and interested in the history and content and process. Some people just want the next step—they don’t want to learn about it. I find them very difficult, and they probably find me very difficult. When I got hired to do Black and Blue, the kid in the show was Savion [Glover, Walker’s most famous student]. He liked to hear what I had to say—the other kids would run and hide, but he wanted to hear about all the people in the game, and that’s what made him different.

Glover recently told the New York Times he wasn’t a fan of dance festivals. What’s your take on festivals, and on that comment?

DW: Savion and I have talked a lot about this. Festivals need to be revamped; things have changed so much, but that’s not a negative thing. Dancers are ready for more challenges. We need to be producing festivals of the highest quality. My criticism of New York is that they have prime time, with places like the Duke and the Joyce, and they’re not using it to their advantage. They have significant space, so they should use significant acts—the best of the best. Novelty acts belong on smaller stages.

Who’s doing interesting work now?

DW: Savion amazes me. I can’t believe how he constantly pushes the envelope—he’s in a class by himself. He’s brought forth a younger generation—I call them the frontrunners— that transcend black and white, male and female. Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards is the most fascinating tap dancer today, with the most sophisticated level of musical phrasing. Jason Samuels Smith won an Emmy Award for his choreography on the [2004] Jerry Lewis telethon.

What will keep tap alive and thriving?

DW: We need to put the best of what we have up on stage; if not, we’re wasting our time and we don’t have that kind of time. We need to reassess, with new vigor, how to get work for the kids. If there’s no visibility, what’s it all for? The older generation is dead and gone, so we need a new plan to keep [tap] alive. We’ve always been an enterprising people— we self-produce. But we need an angel to step in with some real dough and get us a real tour. We need to see tap companies on the level of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris. Brenda Bufalino has done it with the American Tap Dance Orchestra, but we need to do more. We’re ready—it’s show time. 

Festivals Of The Tap Revival  

Festivals played an important part in the tap revival, Walker says, among them the following.   

 • Tapper and historian Jane Goldberg brought tap to the American Dance Festival in 1978 and staged a festival, By Word of Foot, in New York in 1980, 1982, and 1985, to gather masters of the art and handfuls of dancers from across the country.

• In 1986, the Colorado Dance Festival (with organizers Sali Ann Kriegsman and Marda Kim) was among the fi rst big dance gatherings to add a tap residency. “We brought the press in; they had to learn about it to write about it,” Walker said. “Task forces grew out of it, and people went back to spread the knowledge and visibility of tap.”

• In 1989, Jan Corbett organized what would become the Portland International Tap Festival in Portland, OR, featuring such talents as Savion Glover, Honi Coles, and Jimmy Slyde. 

Photo captions (from top to bottom):

Dianne “Lady Di” Walker played a large role in revitalizing tap in the 1980s. Photo courtesy Chicago Human Rhythm Project

Savion Glover, a former student of Walker’s, with musicians Son de Jerez at the 2006 New World Flamenco Festival, where he performed with flamenco dancer Yaelisa. Photo by Rose Eichenbaum, courtesy Irvine Barclay Theatre

Emmy Award-winning tap dancer, teacher, and choreographer Jason Samuels Smith has caught Walker’s eye. Photo by Michael Higgins, courtesy Divine Rhythm Productions  

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