Fred Strickler ’66 helped tap dance find new life
The alumnus fused jazz, ballet and modern dance, sparking a renaissance and leaving a legacy of rhythm and imagination.
“Getting to be a dancer has fulfilled all my dreams,” Fred Strickler ’66 once said. “It’s as good as the gift of life itself, and I don’t regret giving my life to dance.”
Strickler, 81, who died May 31, helped revive and modernize tap dance by combining elements of jazz, ballet and modern dance. “The way he used his body was modern and balletic,” says Lynn Rawlins Dally ’63, who formed the Jazz Tap Ensemble in 1979 with Strickler and Camden Richman. “Fred created things in tap that had never been done before, and his contributions helped lead to a renaissance in tap.”
Strickler created and choreographed original dances and performed them around the world, including at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and with several orchestras, such as the New York Philharmonic and The Cleveland Orchestra. He was featured in “Tap Dance in America,” a PBS special hosted by Gregory Hines.
Strickler was also an influential teacher at the University of California, Riverside, joining the faculty in 1967. His teaching style wasn’t to train his students to dance like him. “I’m much more interested in helping to develop a young artist who has his or her own ideas about the directions they’re heading in,” he said.
Growing up in Columbus, Strickler learned dance at the Jimmy Rawlins Dance Studio, run by Dally’s father. Strickler cleaned the studio after classes, and when he finished sweeping, the teenager “would dance and leap across the floor and have my fantasies.”
At Ohio State, Strickler was mentored by Helen Alkire ’38, ’39 MA, ’90 HON, the first chair of the Department of Dance. “Her goal was to take dance out of the physical education department and make it its own department, and she did just that,” Dally says of the now renowned dance program. “Fred and I were part of that transformation.”
Video: 17 seconds of a tap great
In this short video, Strickler dances in Lynn Rawlins Dally’s “Night in Tunisia.” The clip is part of the Ohio State Theatre Research Institute’s special collections, and the other dancers are Dally and Heather Cornell.
Dally describes Strickler as “curious and imaginative and someone who worked really hard. … He loved to move to complex rhythms, and the way he used his entire body was commanding.”
After graduation, Strickler moved to California and eventually became a featured performer (1968–1975) in the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company, a leading, international modern dance group. He was the artistic director, dancer and choreographer of the experimental Eyes Wide Open Dance Theatre (1974–1979) and then helped create Jazz Tap Ensemble. “Our mission was to revive tap,” Dally says, “by relating back to the great Black artists of the 1930s and 1940s, who called themselves jazz tap percussionists and performed with the big bands—dancers like Charles ‘Honi’ Coles and Cholly Atkins—and combine what they did with modern dance.”
A 1985 review of the group in the Wisconsin State Journal said Strickler could “handle any style with ease—whether it’s the sexy bossa nova or a fine-tuned jazz piece—and [he] performs alternatively with a kind of spunky verve and a classical elegance.”
Strickler later began a solo career and created concert performances. “Eventually Fred referred to himself not as a tap dancer but as a dance artist,” Dally says.
The great dancer donated his collection of programs, posters, choreographies and videos to his alma mater. “He had so many fond memories of his time here,” says Ohio State’s Mara Frazier ’00, ’11 MFA, associate professor and curator of dance in University Libraries’ Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute. “He wanted the next generations to know all about the quality of the dance program at Ohio State, and I think his collection, especially the videos of his performances, will be used a lot by classes for research and inspiration.”
