The Conservatory is pleased to note that dance alum Billie Mahoney (BA, 1949) who also was an adjunct teacher is the receipient of Dance/USA's Champion Award.
The Dance/USA Conference comes to Kansas City June 7–10, hosted by Kansas City Ballet, which notes. "The Champion Award is given to any organization, business, foundation, or individual in the Annual Conference host city whose achievements, leadership, and support have sustained and/or significantly advanced dance in their home community."
Billie Mahoney, a Kansas City native, spent nearly forty years in New York City with a performing career on the variety stage and in film and television. Career highlights: featured act with Lionel Hampton and his band in night club and theater tours including New York’s Apollo Theater; personal appearances with Bob Hope; musical theater with Bob Fosse; featured with Ringling Bros. Circus at Madison Square Garden as champion baton twirler; USO in Korea and Japan. Major television includes The Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey and Friends, Caesar’s Hour, and The Tonight Show. Danced with Gregory Hines at the Folly Theater, 2001, where he called her a “Legend in tap dance”; Featured in the Palm Springs Follies, California, 2002–03.
Teaching highlights: Modern Jazz and tap dance classes in NYC Broadway studios (25 years); the dance faculty of The Juilliard School where she assisted José Limon and directed the Limon Dance Company on tour of the Soviet Union; taught at universities worldwide: Queens College, CUNY (1973–76); associate professor and Coordinator of Dance, Northern Illinois University (1989–92); adjunct faculty, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance (1998–2015) and on faculty at City In Motion and Kansas City Ballet School; a Labanotation specialist, has notated works of Balanchine, De Mille, José Greco, Bob Fosse and Jack Cole. Master’s Degree in Media Studies, The New School, NYC, 1982. Producer/host of cable TV show, DANCE ON: with Billie Mahoney, which aired fifteen years in New York City, now produced at the Todd Bolender Center airing on the UMKC cable channel 17, KHEN. Hosts Jazz Tap Jams at the Uptown Arts Bar.
Congratulations!