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Birth
Diane Walker was born March 8, 1951 in Boston Massachusetts. -
Contracted polio
At age fifteen months, she contracted polio and spent three months in the hospital and also several months in quarantine. When she was released, for the proper exercise of her legs, she was sent to study dance with Ethel Covan for ballet. But, Diane's interest was tap. -
Kennedy Dancing School
At the age of seven, she was referred to to Mildred Kennedy who ran the Kennedy Dancing School in Boston. -
Moving Life
When her mother remarried, Walker was forced to leave the Kennedy school at age ten. They first moved to the West Coast, and she attended the Edwards Air Force Base in Los Angeles, California and attended elementary and middle school there. They then moved to Okinawa, Japan, where she attended high school. She moved back to Boston in 1968 and finished her last year of high school there. -
Marriage
One year out of high school at age 18, she married her husband, Rodney Walker, and set her life to raising a family. -
Before Tap
In 1978, Walker was living in Jamaica Plain section of Boston with two children and her husband. She was working as a staff psychologist at Boston City Hospital. -
Learning to Tap
She attended a social affair at Prince Hall Masonic Temple. There she met the tap dancer Willie Spencer, who sent her to the studio of Leon Collins the next day. Willie called Leon and told him that she wanted to learn to tap dance. Walker started with Routine #1 which she learned in increments, and kept progressing to Routines 2, 3, and 4 that altogether comprised the core of his teachings. She then found herself teaching tap there to Collin's Saturday children's class. -
Reviving the Form of the Young
In 1982, she attended Jane Goldberg's By Word of Foot II (1982) festival in New York City, and was disappointed to see the small amount of black dancers present. She returned to Boston with the intent to teach and help revive the form of the young. -
Moves that Flow Like Music
In 1985, she made an appearance at the after-show jam session of Sole Sisters in Greenwich, New York City. She was described as "a tapper from whom steps and moves flow like music". -
Tap Soloist
In the Spring of 1985, a friend of hers was hospitalized and were too sick to attend the upcoming International Tip Tap Festival in Rome, Italy. He then asked Walker to attend the festival, and perform his classic work, Flight of the Bumblebee, to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov. This moment was her first gig as a tap soloist. -
Another Solo
In 1989, Walker was featured in Great Performances: Tap Dance in America, dancing a solo to the swinging up-tempo Latin "Perdido". -
Movie Star
Walker appeared as one of the Shim Sham Girls in the movie "Tap!" in 1989, but she was not the film's main star in the movie. -
Dance Artists
Diane Walker is considered to by many female black tap dance artists as the transitional figure between the young generation of female dances. She is known for passing on the rhythms and musicality of the old generation. She worked as principal dancer in the Paris production of Black and Blue, as well as principal and assistant choreographer in the Broadway production. That show is today considered the quintessential black-rhythm tap musical of the century. -
Award
In 2012, Walker received the Dance Magazine Award for lifetime achievement in dance.