Angela Bowen, who in a varied and influential life was a dancer, a dance teacher, a scholar and a passionate voice on lesbian, black and feminist issues, died on July 12 in Long Beach, Calif. She was 82.

She had had Alzheimer’s disease for a number of years, her wife, Jennifer Lynn Abod, said.

Dr. Bowen shaped countless young lives through the Bowen/Peters School of Dance in New Haven, which she ran from 1963 to 1982 with her husband at the time, Ken Peters. For the students, many of whom were black and came from less-than-affluent homes, the dancing they did was only part of the instruction.

“She told each of us we were beautiful and worthy,” Angela C. Robinson, who became a Superior Court judge in Connecticut, recalled at a commemorative gathering two years ago.

But that was just one phase of Dr. Bowen’s life. In the 1980s she and Mr. Peters divorced and she came out as a lesbian. In the ensuing years she wrote and spoke frequently on equal rights and related issues and was active in groups like the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays.