Biography
Nicks was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated from Central High School. From 1942-1944 he attended Howard University. His early dance training took place at Cleveland's Karamu Settlement House.
He studied dance at the Katherine Dunham School in New York (1945), whose teachers included Dunham, 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 him (1947) a fellowship to study for a Master Teaching Certificate in Dunham Technique, which he received in 1948.
In 1947 Nicks was appointed Assistant Director of Dance at the Dunham School, a position which he held until 1953.
In 1948-49 he danced in the Benny Goodman Jazz Review on a 13-month tour.
Nicks left the Dunham School in 1953. Forming a small company, "El Ballet Negro de Walter Nicks," in Mexico, he performed at the Insurgentes Theatre in Mexico City 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. Also during this period, he spent five months in Haiti observing Vodou dances.
Upon his return to New York, he became an instructor with the Phillips-Fort Studio (1954–55). In 1954 he performed with Joe Nash and others in Donald McKayle’s “Games” at the 92nd Street Y.
Nicks died 3 April 2007 in Brooklyn, New York.
Read more about this topic: Walter Nicks
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)