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Margaret Evelyn Walker (née Frey) was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1920. Her childhood was spent in various Victorian country towns. She matriculated from MacRobertson Girls' High School in Melbourne in 1938. With no previous dance training, she began studying classical ballet with Edouard and Xenia Borovansky at the Borovansky Ballet Academy in Melbourne in 1940. She was a founder-member of the Melbourne Ballet Club and the Borovansky Ballet Company.

In 1944 her interest in dance and theatre was broadening and she joined the fledgling New Theatre Company. Moving away from classical ballet, she formed the Unity Dance Group in 1946. This group took a program of character ballets to workplaces and factories and developed a repertoire of Australian ballets on contemporary themes. Margaret also established a recreational dance group for the Junior Eureka League. In 1949 she married John Walker, an architect. Margaret was an Australian delegate to the World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace in Berlin in 1951. She subsequently visited the USSR on a three-week delegation tour and went on to several other European countries.

Margaret moved to Sydney in 1952. She organised the growing number of recreational dance groups into one body, the Association of Australian Dancers, with branches in each state. Between 1952 and 1964 Margaret was actively involved in all aspects of the Association of Australian Dancers. In 1958 she was invited by the Waterside Workers' Federation to assist in the formation of their Children's Arts Club, which gave the children of trade union members experience of dance, theatre, art and film. Margaret took into her family the first of her four adopted children in 1964. Her son, Kim Walker, is now a dancer and choreographer in his own right. From her home, Margaret ran the Roseville Dance Centre, a local school which taught folk and character dance and classical ballet.

In 1967, a visit to Australia by the Osipov Orchestra from the USSR gave Margaret the impetus she needed to establish a professional folk/character dance group in Australia. Her group was called Dance Concert. For the next ten years Margaret developed programs of international dances for performance at schools and in local festivals. Guest teachers were brought from overseas to pass on their skills in particular dance forms.

1974 saw the first year of funding from the Australia Council for a professional centre and with additional funding from the New South Wales government Margaret ran large-scale teaching programs in public and Catholic schools in Sydney suburbs. Increases in funding meant that from 1976 Dance Concert had to have a board of management. Relations between the Board and Margaret as artistic director were never easy, and in August 1977 Margaret was dismissed by the Board.

In September of the same year she established the Margaret Walker Folk Dance Centre for the resourcing, teaching and demonstration of folk dance. From 1978 to 1988 she fostered teaching programs involving Western Districts Arts for Youth (Sydney) Theatre in Seven Hills, Sydney and the Blacktown Dancers and she continued to teach in Catholic and public schools whenever projects could be funded. Margaret also continued to bring overseas teachers and choreographers to Australia, arranging tours and funding for them. In addition, she was closely involved with the New South Wales branch of the Australian Association for Dance Education. Eventually she was to become one of the first Life Members of the Australian Association for Dance Education.

In 1982 Margaret was invited to choreograph the display of folkloric dance which formed part of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. That same year her lifetime's work was officially recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours when she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. Despite growing ill health Margaret continued to work as much as she could and was also involved in organisations such as the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre and the Western Sydney Performing Arts Foundation. In 1988 for the Bicentennial celebrations Margaret organised and choreographed the Wollongong Pageant of Nations and also toured a folkloric program to New South Wales country schools.

In 1989 Margaret moved to Canberra, where the Margaret Walker Folk Dance Centre was incorporated. She died in Sydney on 20 December 1996.

Marie Anne Slaney

 

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