FRED STRICKLER – 1943-2025
Wearing a snowy silk suit, sapphire blue shirt, thin fuchsia tie, and white tap shoes, Fred Strickler beguiled the studio audience performing Simple Symphony by Benjamin Britten with a live string orchestra. At the midpoint of Tap Dance in America, the 1989 PBS special hosted by Gregory Hines, Strickler’s elegant arms and torso caress the music while his percussive feet trace an entirely new rhythmic overlay. Alongside Savion Glover, Tommy Tune, and a cavalcade of Black tap dance legends—including the great Charles “Honi” Coles—Hines introduced Strickler as the most experimental tap dancer of his generation, his style rooted in the pioneering modern dance of Bella Lewitzky. Cholly Atkins of the Coles & Atkins dance team dubbed him “Professor” and assured young students studying on tour stops of The Jazz Tap Ensemble that they were at the “University.” Strickler co-founded the ensemble with fellow dancers Lynn Dally and Camden Richman, and a jazz trio: Tom Dannenberg, bass, Paul Arslanian, piano, and Keith Terry drums and percussion. Often closing with Strickler’s masterpiece Tone Poem, hailed by Washington Post as “blistering virtuosity”, the sextet was a sensation at Theatre de la Ville in Paris, Maison de la Danse in Lyons, Joyce Theater in Manhattan, Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires, The Kennedy Center in DC, as well as Charleston’s Spoleto USA, Chicago, Honolulu, and the first “Arts in America” tour of Southeast Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Tap Dance Concerto by Morton Gould, dean of American composers, languished for decades without an interpreter before he named Strickler the preferred soloist. He performed it fifty times with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburg Symphony, Houston Symphony, Puerto Rico Symphony, and regional orchestras across the country. Strickler joined Rhapsody in Taps, Linda Sohl-Ellison, artistic director, in 1992 and performed as a member for eleven years. Born August 5 and raised in Columbus Ohio, where he attended Ohio State University, and where his archive will be housed, Strickler was invited by the University of California Riverside to join its faculty in 1967. Almost immediately he became a member of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company, often appearing as Lewitzky’s dance partner. She commissioned him, with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, to set his dance Pomander on her company, with a backdrop and costumes by Patrick Scott. Strickler achieved the highest level of tenure at the university where he served for 40 years. His last and most enduring initiative is the online Dance History Project of Southern California. A memorial concert will be held August 24, 2pm in Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. To support the Dance History Project in Fred’s honor, contact Jack.jacarandamusic@gmail.com.
LA Stories (1974), choreography by Fred Strickler, text by Patrick Scott, Eyes Wide Open Dance Theatre, photo by William Purcell, Strickler archive.
The memorial concert for Fred Strickler is on Sunday, August 24, 2025 at 2:00 p.m. at Zipper Concert Hall, 200 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012. To donate to the Go Fund Me Fred Strickler Memorial page, please click HERE. Donations will defray costs of memorial concert production and video documentation/live stream. Any remaining funds will support the Fred Strickler Dance History Project of Southern California.
To send flowers, click HERE.
This obituary was written by Patrick Scott and first published in the Los Angeles Times on Jun. 22, 2025.
Featured image: Fred Strickler – Photo by Phil Channing (1993), courtesy of Rhapsody in Taps’ archives.
