The Music Division’s finding aid on distinguished choreographer and dancer Leni Wylliams (1961-1996) is now available as a downloadable PDF!
Despite his short life, Leni Wylliams made notable contributions to the dance field that can now be discovered through the collection assembled and donated by two of his colleagues, community archivist and artist Raymond Steehler and dance photographer David A. Fullard.
Leni Wylliams (né Leonard Morrell Williams) was born in Denver, Colorado, on January 15, 1961. He trained as a modern dancer and performed with the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble before relocating to New York City to dance with Eleo Pomare’s company. Opportunities from East to West Coast presented themselves to Leni: performances with the José Limón Dance Company; recurring coaching and performance engagements in Victoria, British Columbia; performances in the Opera Company of Boston’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”; and even a starring role in a horse ballet in New Mexico. Finding a kindred creative spirit in choreographer Mary Pat Henry, Wylliams moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where together they established the Wylliams/Henry Danse Theatre, now known as the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, whose high artistic standards continue today. Tragically, Wylliams’s career ended after only a decade and a half in September 1996, when he was murdered in his Kansas City home by an assailant, who also burned Wylliams’s artistic records, leaving little original documentation of his work.
Hearing of Leni Wylliams’s untimely death, David Fullard began to contact members of the dance community who had known Leni well. Fullard recorded their telephone conversations, which, as oral histories, became a set of tender reminiscences on a creative life filled with personal and artistic impact. Raymond Steehler edited transcriptions of these audiocassettes and assigned himself the task of retrieving dance programs, video recordings of coaching engagements and performances, newspaper reviews, and other records of Wylliams’s creative work. Steehler authored a Wikipedia page on Wylliams based upon his research and outreach. He also tracked down a recording of an interview of Wylliams, plus a recording of Wylliams singing George Gershwin’s “Summertime” a capella, which preserves Leni’s voice.
Thanks to the initiatives of Fullard and Steehler and their generosity in donating these materials to the Library of Congress, the Raymond Steehler and David Fullard Collection on Leni Wylliams is now available for researchers, artists, teachers, and the public. The transcripts of interviews, copies of performance programs, magazine and newspaper publications, and other materials may be studied in the Library’s Performing Arts Reading Room. The recorded interviews have been digitized by the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) and can be heard in the Library’s Recorded Sound Research Center by advance appointment. The videotapes are being transferred to NAVCC for preservation and digitization: a viewing appointment can be requested in advance through the Moving Image Research Center Ask-a-Librarian link.
For more photographs of Leni Wylliams in dances of Eleo Pomare, watch Dr. David A. Fullard speak on “The Art of Photographing Dance,” available on the Library website and the Library YouTube channel.