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“We knew we were pioneers,” said Virginia Johnson, a former principal dancer with the company, who is now its artistic director. “We were crossing the prairie in a Conestoga wagon, and the Indians were attacking, and we had to band together and make this happen. There was a lot of purpose.”
It was born out of a tragedy. After the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Arthur Mitchell, the first African-American principal dancer at New York City Ballet, decided that a change needed to be made — in his life and in the world. With ballet teacher Karel Shook, he formed Dance Theater of Harlem in 1969. “Mr. Mitchell was peanut butter,” said Iris Cloud, a former dancer, “and Mr. Shook was jelly.”
Together, they wanted to prove to the world something that still needed proving back then: that blacks could indeed dance ballet — and marvelously.
The beginnings were humble; dancers took class in a converted garage. But as the years went on, Dance Theater, performing an array of ballets by George Balanchine and later adding works like John Taras’ “The Firebird” and “Creole Giselle” to the mix, grew and toured the world.
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But in 2004, the company, burdened by debt, had to go on hiatus. To the dismay of many, that lasted eight years. When it started up again in 2012, with Johnson at the artistic helm, it had been reduced to 18 dancers from 44.
That Dance Theater has persisted — and continues to improve — is critical. In the ballet world, dancers of color remain underrepresented.
“To see a stage full of dancers of color dancing ballet — how beautiful is that?” said Andrea Long-Naidu, who danced at City Ballet before joining Dance Theater. “Now, to me, when I do go to companies that are not that diverse, I see something wrong with it. Like, Oh my God, what is going on here?”
On Wednesday, the company will return to New York City Center with a program that pays tribute to Mitchell, who died in September. (Shook died in 1985.) The season also includes a reconstruction of Mitchell’s 1971 “Tones.”
“Like everything the company did in the early ’70s, ‘Tones’ was Arthur Mitchell teaching us to dance the way he wanted us to dance,” Johnson said. “It’s starkly neoclassical. It’s angular, it’s dynamic, it’s fast footwork, and there’s a lot of counterpoint so we could be accurate.”
Last summer, Mitchell restaged it with two former dancers, a smaller cast and a new name — “Tones II.” Dancer Christopher McDaniel said that Mitchell seemed frail at those rehearsals. “But he still spoke in that Arthur Mitchell way,” he said.
Mitchell had a reputation for being tough, but that was hardly news to McDaniel, who studied at Dance Theater’s school as a child. “Just as much as he would tear into someone if they did something wrong, he would celebrate something good,” McDaniel said.
In honor of the anniversary, current and former members talked about their time with the company and, of course, Mitchell and his legacy. Here are edited excerpts from those interviews.
Lydia Abarca, classes, 1968; dancer, 1969-80
I had a sister who was taking violin lessons at the Harlem School of the Arts, and she said there was a black man there who was going to be teaching ballet. (Arthur) was sort of a maniac. He was very much about: “Take off your shoes and socks, let me see your feet, point them really hard. Have you ever been on point before?” I was in awe.
Virginia Johnson, classes, 1968; dancer, 1969-97; artistic director, 2013-present
(Arthur) told me I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know how to dance. He was going to have to start at the beginning — that everything was wrong with what I was doing. “You’re fat, you’re ugly.” He laid it on really thick. And in later years, I came to understand that it was a test, but when it happened it was devastating. That was the first time I ever got drunk in my life. But you know what? I went back. What he was doing was: “Can you change? Changing is going to be hard. It’s going to be this hard. Are you willing to do it?” (Laughs.)
Tania Léon, music director, 1968-80
I started working with them when the name Dance Theater of Harlem didn’t exist. My first file cabinet was a shoe box.
Donald Williams, junior company: 1972-75; main company, 1977-2004; consultant: 2015-present
We walked down the street in Harlem, and the street urchins and drug dealers respected these dancers coming to this rough neighborhood — they see us going to the beacon of Dance Theater of Harlem that is building great human beings, not just for dance but for humanity. It was a place of hope in the middle of a troubled area.
Iris Cloud, dancer, 1978-81; teacher at Dance Theater’s school, 1981-94
I’m a fair-skinned black woman. Very fair. So I walked up to him and asked, “What do you do about someone who wants to join your company who is very fair-skinned?” He sort of looked at me and I was like, “Yeah, I’m black.” (Laughs.) A couple of weeks later, he invited me to dance with his company.
Abarca: In the early days, he took us to a discothèque just so that we could get that energy out. We were young, and we called him Arthur. Somewhere along the line, it became Mr. Mitchell. The company was growing really rapidly. We would travel around and dancers would audition with us onstage and next thing we’d know, the really good ones would show up in New York. At some point we couldn’t say Arthur. We were not a little group anymore. We were making headlines.
Homer Hans Bryant, dancer, 1971-78; director of the Dance Theater of Harlem Workshop Ensemble and School, 1981-85
He used to show us how to dress. Dance Theater of Harlem was like Motown. We couldn’t go out of that place without looking our best. I was always a smooth dresser, but I got less jeans and more business suit and nice shirts and pants. He said, “You have to walk in like you are somebody.”
Johnson: I never liked performing, but you had to perform to get paid. He used to look at me and go: “Searching, searching, searching — always searching. Aren’t you ever going to find it?”
Bryant: We would go down South, and people would want you to go through the back of the hotel. Mr. Mitchell was very upset about that. “No, no, no. If they can’t go through the front, we’re not performing.” I think Mr. Mitchell took a lot of blows for us. Sometimes we didn’t even know that he was taking blows. He sheltered us from the storm.
Endalyn Taylor, dancer, 1984-97; director of the Dance Theater school, 2005-14
When I first came to DTH for the summer, I actually lived with Arthur Mitchell’s mother because I was underage. Talk about intimidating. It was like, I don’t care that you’re young and away from home for the first time. You’ve got to learn how to take care of yourself. You have to learn how to manage and navigate this world that you’ve decided to be a part of.
Cloud: I wouldn’t call him a tyrant. He knew what he wanted. He literally instilled his blood into us, so that no matter what you did when you danced you felt Mr. Mitchell coming out of you.
Andrea Long-Naidu, dancer, 1996-2004
He’d say, “You need a stronger backbone, Andrea!” I’d be like, Oh Jesus Christ, would he leave me alone? And now I feel him. I’m (on the faculty) at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet now, and when I think, Can I do this? Am I capable? I hear him in my head. “Andrea. Do it. Go. Make it happen.”
Charmaine Hunter, dancer, 1978-2002; restaged works in 2016 and 2018
We were getting to do works that many only dream about. And I don’t mean people of color. Dancers. We did Balanchine like it was coming out of our ears.
Taylor: Mr. Mitchell would often say: “Come front and center. You have the right to stand anyplace you want to.” Until I got there, I didn’t realize that many times I did not stand in the front or in the center. There was a liberation, and it happened at Dance Theater of Harlem.
Lorraine Graves, dancer, 1978-96; ballet mistress, 1982-96; guest teacher and répétiteur, 1998-present
Even though things were going well for us in the ’80s, it was still that struggle. Are they good enough? Can they do this? You were always being judged in a way. It made us want to fight. It made us stronger.
Johnson: I left in 1997, and I left because I was old. I was 47. That’s old. He was, like, flummoxed. He said: “I’ve got this ballet coming for you! We’ve already signed the papers.” I was like, Oh that’s too bad. He had to understand.
Arthur Mitchell was a brilliant, very deeply caring person. He had to wear that mantle of ogre, but that wasn’t the real Arthur Mitchell.
Long-Naidu: I think he started to soften a bit when he was getting older — a little bit. Not a huge amount. Maybe 30 percent?
Williams: If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be so tough. That’s what a lot of kids now don’t understand. They think of the toughness as meanness. The coddling thing was not something that happened then — and it wasn’t just Arthur Mitchell back in those days, it was the way of dance. (Laughs) It was shut up and dance.
Long-Naidu: I remember him at a diversity meeting at the School of American Ballet, and he took over this meeting. He said: “We need to get more African-American girls that look like Andrea. Because half the time you don’t even know.” (Mitchell was referring to dancers with darker complexions.) He would say those things. It shocked me.
Alicia Mack Graf, dancer, 1996-99 and 2003-04
He said this a lot: “You either hit the high C or you don’t.” As a dancer, you either make the magic or you don’t. He taught us how to make the magic.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.