[Senate] Passing of UCR Professor Emeritus Fred Strickler

[Cherysa Cortez]

*Sent on behalf of Academic Senate Chair Ken Barish*

*Passing of UCR Professor Emeritus Fred Strickler*

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Fred Strickler, co-founder of UC
Riverside’s Department of Dance, passed away on May 31, 2025. Born on
August 5, 1943, in Mount Clemens, Michigan, Strickler studied modern dance
as an undergraduate at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.


In 1967, he met the dance historian Christena Lindborg Schlundt, one of the
first members of the UCR faculty, who offered Strickler a position teaching
modern dance technique and choreography in what was then the Department of
Physical Education. Strickler taught dance at UCR – including modern dance,
tap dance, composition, and production – for the next forty years.



In 1972, Strickler collaborated with Schlundt to found the Program in
Dance, which evolved into the present Department of Dance, and he played a
key role in the development of its undergraduate curriculum and later
served as a resource to students in the MFA in Experimental Choreography
program. He served numerous times as the artistic director of *UCR Is
Dancing*, the annual showcase of student choreography. In 1995, he was
named the Distinguished Humanities Research Lecturer by UCR’s Center for
Ideas and Society. He retired in 2007.



Over the course of his career, Strickler choreographed more than 130 dance
works in multiple styles, which he presented at venues that ranged from
high school auditoriums to the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution,
and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.



Coinciding with his start at UCR, Strickler studied with the modern dance
artist Bella Lewitzky; he became a featured dancer and choreographer with
the Lewitzky Dance Company until 1975. In 1974, he co-founded Eyes Wide
Open Dance Theatre, a Los Angeles-based modern dance ensemble, which lasted
until 1980.



In the 1970s, he began to experiment with tap dance, which he had initially
studied as a child at the Jimmy Rawlins Studio in Columbus, Ohio. In 1979,
he co-founded the Jazz Tap Ensemble, which toured the United States,
Europe, and Asia. In 1984, the Jazz Tap Ensemble toured Southeast Asia as
U.S. State Department cultural ambassadors. In subsequent years, he was a
guest artist with the Southern California-based company Rhapsody in Taps.
Strickler was a major figure in what is often considered the tap dance
renaissance of the late twentieth century.



Strickler’s virtuosic tap dance artistry – distinguished by his
extraordinary musicality and skillful exploration of the complex
interactions of rhythm, sound, and movement – was acclaimed by audiences
and critics alike. He performed often as a soloist, including his
choreographic version of Morton Gould’s *Tap Dance Concerto*, which he
premiered in 1983 with the composer conducting, and which he went on to
perform with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland
Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Long
Beach Symphony, as well as at UCR. In 2001, he danced the *Concerto* at the
Labor Day Celebration with the National Symphony Orchestra on the West Lawn
of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for an audience of 70,000.



On television and in film, Strickler’s work was featured in the 1980
award-winning documentary *Tapdancin’*, by Christian Blackwood; in *Jazz
Tap Ensemble: USA*, produced in 1983 for Channel Four at the Riverside
Studios, London; in *The Jazz Tap Ensemble with Honi Coles*, which aired on
KQED, San Francisco in November 1986; in the 1989 Gregory Hines PBS
special *Great
Performances: Tap Dance in America*; and in the 1999 award-winning film by
Bridget Murnane, *Four Dancers*.



Before his death, Fred was preparing his archive with UCR Librarian Emerita
Dr. Lizbeth Langston. When completed, the archive will be deposited at the
Ohio State University.



Strickler’s legacy lives on in the department he helped co-found and in the
generations of students he trained, many of whom are themselves now
dancers, teachers, and choreographers.
- - - - - - -

Cherysa Cortez

Executive Director, Academic Senate

University Office Building 221

cherysac at ucr.edu

*UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE*

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