Since a child she acquired dance tuition from good Mrs. Thorp inside the midtown New york. Up to 1897, once graduating from Thorp’s dancing college, she toured briefly that have Black colored Patti’s Troubadours. An excellent girlfriend invited their to design to possess a marketing which have Bert Williams and you can George Walker, who had just obtained a hit within vaudeville introduction from the Koster and you may Bial’s Audio Hall. She wanted to design into the advertisement and you can subsequently inserted brand new guys in order to dancing from the cakewalk finale. Immediately following joining John W. Isham’s Octoroon, good critic on Indianapolis Freeman proclaimed, “I experienced merely observed a girl performer.” That have Elegance Halliday she designed the fresh new sis moving act from Overton and Halliday. They did just like the pair of Honolulu Belles throughout the Williams and Walkers’ The insurance policy Users (1899), and you can from there, Overton began to generate since an effective soloist with big roles. In the musical comedy This new Sons out of Ham (1900) she performed and you will danced “Miss Hannah regarding Savannah” and “Top Lady”; and in the 2nd model, “Society” and “Sparkling Ruby” hence brought their own jubilant recognition. James Weldon Johnson typed you to she “got the lowest-pitched sound having an organic sob in order to they, hence she realized the way you use which have informing perception inside the getting more than a tune” (Johnson 1933). Tom Fletcher recalled their once the a musician who performed ragtime music and ballads equally well; so when a dancer “who you’ll perform everything, without number whether or not it are money-and-wing, cakewalk, if not some sort of grotesque dancing . . . she borrowed the fresh new abilities a nice gracefulness of motion unsurpassed by anyone” (Fletcher 1954).

In 1910, she joined the latest Wise Place, a black theatrical business, and you may starred in Their Award the Barber (1911)

To your Summer twenty two, 1899, following the closure of A fortunate Coon, the fresh ragtime music explained by the Ann Charters due to the fact “a great hodge-podge of all things from the ‘coon’ range out of buck-dance and you may ragtime tunes in order to selections on huge opera,” Overton partnered George Walker; the commitment do change and you may intensify the fresh cakewalk regarding a key African-American men and women moving into the a black colored modernist expression, a high artwork value becoming did just before royalty, into the white elite, and on brand new performance phase.

You to definitely evening if you are onstage, George Walker, to try out the fresh new role off Bud Jenkins, turned ill

Williams and you can Walker’s Dahomey (1903) try one of the primary black musicals to find out this new cakewalk’s conversion process. Inside it, Aida (she changed the newest spelling regarding their label from Ada to Aida, the name of the Haitian lwa from fertility) starred Rosetta Lightfoot that have a highlighted unicamente, “I do want to Be a genuine Woman,” and “Cakewalk Finale,” partnered because of the their husband. “The new line, the latest sophistication, new assured ecstasy of those dancers, which bent more than backwards up until the thoughts almost touched a floor, an accomplishment demanding a great amount of electricity, the enthusiastic prancing, nearly when you look at the slow motion, haven’t already been equaled in this revel, let alone exceeded,” wrote Carl Van Vechten (Van Vechten 1974). Dahomey try delivered to London area, in which it absolutely was displayed at a demand efficiency just before Queen Edward VII in the Buckingham Palace. United kingdom high-society observed new Royal Family that have an excellent gushing passion to have cakewalking. The firm gone back to New york with a brand new kind of the fresh music entitled In the Dahomey, and that exposed within Grand Opera (1904).

In Williams and you can Walker’s next inform you, Abyssinia (1906), Overton Walker is actually both a performer additionally the show’s choreographer. She try second searched inside the and you may staged this new sounds wide variety to own Bandanna Land (1908). Their symptoms have been afterwards diagnosed once the syphilis. Within the 1909 he kept the fresh inform you, and his part is rewritten for Overton Walker, whom donned his flashy gowns and you may performed their number, along with his big track, “Bon bon Buddie.” Together with her partner’s reputation more sluggish deteriorating, and you will facing where her upcoming lay, she chose to not replace their package that have Williams and you will Walker and you will alternatively entered the newest shed away from Bob Cole and you may J. Rosamonde Johnson’s Brand new Red-colored Moonlight (1909) where she is seemed in 2 songs wide variety: “Pheobe Brown” and you can “Pickaninny Days,” BesГёk denne lenken moving buck-and-side to your chorus. She next launched on Brand new York’s Western Theater that have a beneficial vaudeville work featuring an alternate dancing, the fresh “Kara Kara,” or dancing l’Afrique.