Walter Nicks

Walter Nicks was born on July 26, 1925, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into an African-American family, and was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated from Central High School. He attended Howard University from 1942 to 1944 before finding his life's calling in dance, training at the Katherine Dunham School in New York from 1945. In 1948 he earned a Master Teaching Certificate in the Dunham technique, becoming one of its certified master teachers and, for years, an assistant director at the Dunham School.

Over a career spanning nearly six decades, Nicks moved fluidly between the concert stage, Broadway, and television. He performed in productions including "My Darlin' Aida," "House of Flowers," and "Jamaica," and served as choreographer for Harry Belafonte from 1959 to 1963, shaping acclaimed television specials and touring stage works. He mentored a generation of dancers, among them Arthur Mitchell, Carmen de Lavallade, Geoffrey Holder, and Donald McKayle.

Nicks carried Black American jazz and modern dance across the world. He introduced jazz-dance instruction to Europe, working extensively in Sweden at the University of Stockholm and the Swedish Ballet Academy, and advised the government of Guinea in 1963 in a project that helped give rise to Le Ballet National Djoliba. In 1972 he founded the Walter Nicks Dance Theatre Workshop, long based at the Church of the Intercession in Manhattan, and later helped establish a professional training center in France.

He continued teaching and choreographing into his final years, at institutions from Connecticut College to Duke University. Walter Nicks died on April 3, 2007, in Brooklyn, New York. We honor a master teacher who carried the dignity of Black American dance to the wider world and lit the way for those who followed.