Festival Taps Into ‘Essence of Rhythm’ : Dance: A performance Saturday by prominent choreographers caps eight days of classes and discussions at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

After two kids, a college degree and employment as a social worker, Dianne Walker returned at 28 to tap-dance, a passion she had pursued as a youth.

It all started--again--with a simple hello.

One day in 1979, Walker told an acquaintance that she yearned to learn “real” tap, “like I’d seen in the movies--not like they teach you in dancing school,” she said. The friend recommended that she look up tap master Leon Collins, then also living in Boston.

“I immediately went to see Leon, and that bug bit me the minute I walked in the door,” she said in a recent phone interview from her Boston home. “It was his personal demeanor, first of all. He said ‘Hi dumpling, come on in. I’m expecting you. I heard you wanted to tap.’ ”

Walker, who never looked back, will join other prominent dancer-choreographers Saturday for “Essence of Rhythm,” a presentation capping an eight-day “Tap Festival” of classes, panel discussions and performances at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

She’ll share the stage with Billy Siegenfeld, a New York jazz dancer, Sam Weber, a member of Los Angeles’ Jazz Tap Ensemble, Fred Strickler and other members of L.A.’s Rhapsody in Taps, and Linda Sohl-Donnell, that company’s artistic director, a festival organizer and OCC faculty member.

In standard tap tradition, veteran hoofers Leonard Reed, Frances Nealy, Fayard Nicholas and Glenn Turnbull are expected to leave their seats for a turn or two as well.

Collins, Walker’s mentor, was a “rhythm” dancer who emphasized tap’s audible rhythmic complexities over visual pyrotechnics and stylistic individuality over chorus-line uniformity.

“He danced pretty low to the floor, and his rhythms were fast and very cleanly articulated,” she said. “It was a much more sophisticated presentation of rhythm than anything I had done. I thought of him as a storyteller with his feet.”

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Student and teacher formed a school in Boston in the early ‘80s. Although Collins died in 1985, Walker still uses his codified “formula” for teaching rhythm-style tap and also passes on his philosophy.

Over the years, she has performed on Broadway (in a featured role) and in the original Paris production of “Black and Blue,” a tribute to great black American jazz and blues artists. She also has danced in numerous clubs, jazz and tap festivals in this country and abroad, frequently winning praise, as Collins did, for musicality.

When she danced in Santa Monica last July in a tribute to the late tap master Eddie Brown, Times’ staff writer Chris Pasles singled her out for her “breathlessly light taps, neatly placed and slyly inflected.” She ended an “insouciant solo, with a superbly controlled decrescendo that terminated in a fluttery trill.”

Walker most often improvises, which allows her greater interaction with the musicians she performs with, she said.

“For me, the fun part is to work with a new group of musicians where together we’ll come up with something. They’ll play it, I’ll dance it, and we’ll both have a great time.

“I like something that swings,” she added, “music you can really pat your foot to.”

Rhapsody in Taps’ five-piece jazz combo will provide live accompaniment at OCC, where Walker plans to tap to “Red Top,” a blues tune, and perform a “funkier,” jazzed-up version of a lyrical waltz she typically dances to expresses gratitude to tap greats of today and yesterday.

“I studied mostly with Leon (Collins), but all of them--Honi Coles, Jimmy Slyde, Eddie Brown and others--have given so much to us,” she said. “I just have a real appreciation and affection for them, and I want to say thank you.”

* “Essence of Rhythm” will be staged Saturday at 8 p.m. at Robert B. Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. $12. (714) 432-5880.