Person
Biography
Liz Walton was a dancer with Paul Taylor when his company made its Pillow debut in 1964. During that season, she performed as an original cast member in Taylor’s classic Aureole and two other early works. She returned to the Pillow as a faculty member in 1982, teaching as part of a three-week Paul Taylor Workshop. Although she had danced as a child in Washington DC, she then studied pre-med at Brandeis and only returned to dance as a way of relieving stress while working with pediatric leukemia patients. Studying at the time with former Graham dancer Bob Cohan, she asked him if she should move to New York to pursue dance. “I don’t know, honey, but if you’re going, you better hurry up,” he reportedly replied, and she did just that. There she met Paul Taylor in a Graham class and she became part of his first company. After six years of touring, Walton left the troupe to get married and moved to Baltimore. She taught dance at the Peabody Institute and became a professor at the University of Maryland, where she chaired the dance department for two decades and then continued to teach. While she didn’t have another direct connection with the Pillow after 1982, she had strong indirect contact through daughter Rosalynde LeBlanc, who has performed at the Pillow with Bill T. Jones, the White Oak Dance Project, and Liz Gerring. Walton died in November 2017 at the age of 81.
Source of Biography
Written by Norton Owen for Jacob's Pillow Remembers.