Walter Nicks

Walter Nicks (July 26, 1925 – April 3, 2007) was an African-American dancer, choreographer, and teacher whose career in jazz and modern dance spanned nearly six decades. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended Central High School and received his earliest dance training at the Karamu Settlement House. From 1942 to 1944 he studied at Howard University before relocating to New York, where in 1945 he enrolled at the Katherine Dunham School. There he trained under Dunham herself alongside Lavinia Williams, Talley Beatty, Tommy Gomez, Archie Savage, and Marie Bryant. He also studied with José Limón, Robert Joffrey, Karel Shook, Louis Horst, and Doris Humphrey.

Dunham awarded Nicks a fellowship in 1947 to pursue a Master Teaching Certificate in Dunham Technique, which he completed in 1948. That same year he was appointed Assistant Director of Dance at the Dunham School, a post he held until 1953. During this period he also toured for thirteen months, from 1948 to 1949, as a dancer in the Benny Goodman Jazz Review.

Nicks made his Broadway debut in 1952 as a dancer in My Darlin' Aida. He subsequently served as both dancer and assistant choreographer for House of Flowers, working under choreographers George Balanchine and Herbert Ross during the production's Philadelphia tryout and its Broadway run in 1954–55. In that capacity he coached a roster of dancers that included Arthur Mitchell, Geoffrey Holder, Carmen De Lavallade, Dolores Harper, Louis Johnson, Donald McKayle, Albert Popwell, and Glory Van Scott.

After leaving the Dunham School in 1953, Nicks formed a small company called El Ballet Negro de Walter Nicks and performed in Mexico City at the Insurgentes Theatre in a production starring Cantinflas, at the Sans Souci in Havana, on television in the Dominican Republic, and at the Condado Beach Hotel in San Juan. He also spent five months in Haiti during this period studying Vodou dances. Returning to New York, he joined the Phillips-Fort Studio as an instructor in 1954–55 and that same year performed with Joe Nash and others in Donald McKayle's Games at the 92nd Street Y.

A John Hay Whitney Fellowship took Nicks to Brazil in 1956–57 to study cultural dances. He served as assistant choreographer for Jamaica under Jack Cole from 1957 to 1959, collaborating with Alvin Ailey and Christyne Lawson, and also worked as assistant choreographer for Carmen Jones under Oona White at City Center Theatre. From 1959 to 1963 he choreographed for Harry Belafonte, including the CBS television specials Tonight with Belafonte (1959), which earned Belafonte an Emmy, New York 19 (1960), and Look Up and Live, as well as stage productions that toured nationally, among them Sing, Man, Sing (1956), which featured dancers Alvin Ailey and Mary Hinkson, and Belafonte '63.

In 1959 Nicks introduced jazz dance instruction to Europe at the International Academy of Dance in Krefeld, Germany. His work in Sweden, facilitated by Lia Schubert, included a consultancy at Stockholm University from 1960 to 1967, a guest instructorship at the Swedish Ballet Academy in 1960, and performances with his small company between 1961 and 1965. He appeared on Swedish television multiple times during the 1960s, most notably in the 1966 series Introduction to Jazz Ballet with Schubert. He served as professor and Director of Jazz Dance at Stockholm's Statens Dansskola from 1967 to 1971 and choreographed the Swedish production of West Side Story in 1968. In 1969 he danced in a concert of Duke Ellington's sacred music with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Gustaf Vasa Church in Stockholm, a performance broadcast on Swedish television.

In 1963 Nicks traveled to Guinea as a government consultant, where he studied traditional dances and formulated recommendations that led to the formation of Le Ballet National Djoliba under President Sékou Touré. In the summer of 1972, at the invitation of the French Federation of Dance, he founded the Walter Nicks Dance Theatre Workshop, which subsequently toured France and Belgium and later performed in the French Caribbean. The company became affiliated with the Connecticut College American Dance Festival beginning in 1973 and participated in the National Endowment for the Arts's Artists-in-the-Schools program for nine years, from 1973 to 1981. Based at the Church of the Intercession in Manhattan, the company performed in the Palm Sunday pageant there through 2002. Nicks also taught at international workshops and festivals in Germany, France, Israel, Spain, Italy, Finland, and East Berlin, and for several years held a faculty position at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen-Werden, Germany.

Nicks was co-founder and Artistic Director of the Centre Formation Professionelle in Poitiers, France, from 1982 to 1992. He choreographed Spirit Blues for the National Ballet of Finland, which premiered at the Finnish National Opera on October 19, 1989. His academic appointments included residencies at Connecticut College, the University of Maryland, Bard College, Duke University in 1991, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 1992 to 1994. In 2000 he choreographed Trance Atlantic for Philadanco, and in 2002 he taught and performed at the Katherine Dunham celebration at Jacob's Pillow and served on the faculty of the New York City Board of Education's Dance Institute. He was a recipient of the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching from the American Dance Festival, and served on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Blacks in Dance and the Advisory Board of the Black Arts Network Diaspora. Nicks died on April 3, 2007, in Brooklyn, New York.