She made her professional debut with Louis Armstrong at the Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago in 1934, and became a regular singer and dancer in the venue's floor shows.

[1] She worked as a teacher at the dance schools run by Katherine Dunham and Eugene Loring, where she taught actors, including Marlon Brando.

In 1948 in Los Angeles she was a headline act at the Florentine Gardens (which rebranded itself The Cotton Club), where she taught burlesque and other routines to dancers in the chorus line.

She appeared in the RKO movie They Live by Night (1948), as well as Betty Grable's 20th Century Fox film Wabash Avenue (1950), and toured the US in The Big Show of 1951 with Ethel Waters, Sarah Vaughan and Nat 'King' Cole.

[1] She continued to teach dance to film actors, working with Gene Kelly – who called her "one of the finest dancers I've ever seen in my life" – Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse, Betty Grable, Ava Gardner and others.