June Neal Key is a native Kansan, who attended Kansas City, Kansas Schools.  She also attended Junior College and has an Associate Degree in Business Administration.  At an early age, June knew what she wanted to do in life.  Dancing was first nature to her, and this desire set a course for a life of dancing.  Her parents flaunted her talents before family members and friends until her mother decided to put her in a dancing school.  She enrolled in the Irene McLaurian School of Dancing.  She was selected to be a junior teacher at the age of nine, and realized she could teach children how to dance.  The experience of working with children was certainly a factor in her decision to own her own school one day.  At age 16, she started the first baton class to be taught in a dancing school.

June had an illustrious dance career as a child performer.  She started performing one year after she started dance lessons.  It was not long before she learned that she was the only acrobatic and contortionist dancer in the metropolitan area.  At age 9, she danced with her first professional stage performer, Lionel Hampton and his Band.  She was a one-of-a-kind dancer and acrobatic performer during those times and was asked to dance on a regular basis, continuing throughout her school years.  From elementary school through high school, she helped choreograph and perform in all kinds of school programs and events.  At age 12, at the unveiling of the first B-29 bomber plane at the Fairfax Airport, she opened the show as “Little Miss Bomber”; she held annual spots as “Little Miss Jabberwock” for the Delta Phi Beta Sorority,  and “Little Miss Blue Revue” an Alpha Phi Alpha Sorority event. Her career spanned all kinds of local variety shows, parades, exhibitions, grand openings, car shows and competitions.  June won almost all of the competitions she performed in.  She entered a national competition at age 16 and performed for 12 straight weeks in the local competition and won first place each week to place against all kinds of talents.

At age 16, June embarked upon a professional career when she was asked to join a black dance troupe called “The Ebony Dancers”, the only black dance troupe in the United States.  With this troupe she performed regularly at various cities in Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas.  In those days dancers performed in the large nightclubs where they had big bands and big shows.  June performed at such clubs as the Blue Room, Orchid Room, Zelmaroda Club, The Kansas Citians Club, and many others. The Ebony Dancers were the headliner dance troupe at the Texas State Fair in 1949 starring Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and the great Erskine Hawkins Band.  Other professionals with whom she has performed with are, The Sweethearts of Rhythm Band, Louis Jordan and the Tymphony Five Band, Moms Mabley, and the famed tap dancer, Little Buck.

June married and started a family, but never lost sight of her goal to teach dancing.  In 1951 she started a partnership with Willitta Hinton Cole and opened the Billye and June’s School of Dancing.  This was a good venture that lasted for ten years, when her partner left to start a family.  She then reopened her own school at the beckoning of the parents to keep the students she had in dance class.  In those days, there were not many black children taking dance lessons and she k new there was a lot of talent out on the sidewalks that would never be discovered or appreciated unless someone could bring it out where others could see it.  The school was renamed the June Neal Dance Studio. Since that time, many students have won talent contests, appeared in all kinds of local programs and events, have been first place winners in pageants, have produced dance instructors and teachers who have opened their own studios, produced professional performers who have appeared on television and stages across the country and abroad.  June is also the Director of the Praise Dance Ministry at Trinity A.M.E. Church where she has five praise teams.

Because June was a business major, it was a tremendous benefit for her studio business venture.  She also had a varied business career outside of the dance studio.  She worked 15 years for the Urban Renewal Agency starting from a secretarial position to Library Research Analyst; she was a State Field Representative for Senator Robert Dole, working from Kansas City to Washington, D.C.;  she taught Life and Health Insurance for CNA Insurance Company in the states of Kansas and Missouri; Office Manager for both Joanne Collins for Congress Campaign, and Inez Kaiser and Associates; Bookkeeper for Douglass State Bank; Admissions Representative for Park College; and Contract Compliance Officer for the Wyandotte County Court House. 

She has received many business and dance service and appreciation awards, special service and community service awards, several Woman of the Year awards, several special service and Recognition awards from Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri School Board of Education, and has been listed on several Most Influential Persons Lists.  She was one of six black persons in the State of Kansas to be chosen to be among 35 persons selected to be in the first Leadership Class for the State of Kansas.  She was invited to New York by Alvin Ailey to visit him and his school, and to be his special guest when he opened at the Metropolitan Opera.

June has worked on many boards such as Black Adoption and Services, KMADT, Chamber of Commerce, Women’s Chamber of Commerce, Foster Grandparents Advisory Board, King Urban Center, National Black Business and Professional Women’s Association, Advisory Board of the Civics Art Council, Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey, and Martin Luther King Celebration Committee of Lee’s Summit.

June is proud of what she has accomplished with the students that she had, and always talked to them about doing the best, and being the best at whatever they do.  She has dedicated her life to teaching children to dance and show their inner expressions through beautiful movements.  If you were to ask her how far she thinks she has come, she would probably say, “I’ve come a long way, but I still have a long way to go.  Everyday offers you something new, and there are many things I still want to do before I can say I am done”.