Walter Raines, a dancer and teacher who was a charter member of Dance Theater of Harlem and the director of its school, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 54.

The cause was AIDS, said Jeffrey Hankinson, his cousin.

Mr. Raines was a classical ballet dancer of an elegance so unyielding that he could stand on his hands for two minutes, or so it seemed in Arthur Mitchell’s “Biosfera,” without losing his distinguished look. But Mr. Raines also choreographed, taught ballet at several universities as well as at Dance Theater of Harlem, staged rock acts and Off Broadway plays and was even responsible for the art direction and costumes for the film “The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy” (1980).

“I’ve been warned against being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none,” Mr. Raines said in a 1977 interview, “but when I die I’d just like to be called ‘a man of the theater.'”

Mr. Raines was born in Braddock, Pa., and trained in dance at the Pittsburgh Playhouse School of Theater and Dance and the New York City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet. He was also a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University. In addition to his career with the Harlem company, where he danced from 1968 to 1978, Mr. Raines performed with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany and the Pennsylvania Ballet.

He was an associate professor at City College of New York from 1978 to 1989 and headed several programs at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in the 1980’s. He was also a guest teacher in Germany at the Tanz-Forum der Oper der Stadt Koln, at the Vienna Opera Ballet and at Den Norske Ballet of Oslo.

Mr. Raines created ballets for companies including Dance Theater of Harlem and the Capitol Ballet of Washington. He was the first black choreographer to work at the Royal Opera in London, creating the dance and musical staging for Michael Tippett’s “Ice Break” in 1977.

Cranko: The Man and His Choreography by Ashley Killar
  “One afternoon, John told me that a new male recruit, recommended by someone in America, was arriving from Atlanta, and asked me to look after him.  In class the next morning I saw that he was a very strong dancer. I duly took him to the canteen to meet John [Cranko], who wasted no time on pleasantries: why did he dance?, what were his other interests? Within minutes it became clear that the young newcomer saw little wrong with racial segregation. The conversation broke off abruptly and John went back to his crossword. The next morning the new boy was called out of class and by the end of it he and his things had disappeared.Three weeks later, an AfricanAmerican dancer, Walter Raines, arrived. He was not as physically gifted a dancer as his predecessor, but he was already in possession of a contract. Walter went on to dance with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and then to direct its school” (203).