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Queen of the Dance Theatre of Harlem
| Article
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16258 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1989 |
3,558 Words |
| Author
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Maya Wallach
Maya Wallach is a dance writer, critic, and photographer
currently based in Los Angeles |
It has been twenty years since the assassination of Martin
Luther King, Jr., spurred a ballet dancer to build his own
dream: the Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH). New York City Ballet principal dancer Arthur Mitchell founded DTH in 1969 with a handful of dancers in a Harlem church basement. One of those dancers was a young ballerina from Washington, D.C., Virginia Johnson. Without DTH, Johnson probably would not have pursued dancing. As DTH began its Twentieth Anniversary National Tour this year, Johnson talked about her twenty years of dancing and living what was once only a dream.
The company is accepted in a completely different way than it was accepted twenty years ago. Though often, when we're outside of New York and we do those interviews, the first question is about "Well, why are blacks doing ballet?" Twenty years later! To me, it is not an issue. It is long past that. In 1969, or 1972, it was very important to stress black and white. But it's 1988. And we haven't gotten past that. And it is very disappointing that this is still the first thing people think about. Instead of: "What is it to be a dancer? What are you doing? What are the programs like? What does this piece mean?" Get beyond just the surface of it!
The world hasn't changed. It's changed, but it really hasn't changed. We still seek to inspire people to see more than what they think the world is. And of course that is what we were doing at the beginning. Martin Luther King was trying to make the world go in a certain direction, and this is a continuance of that. We're still in a situation where we look and we say "You have black skin: you have these feelings, you do that, you think that." We still are. So that function is still there for the company. I know that in time it will become different, but it hasn't yet. And we have to keep showing people that it's possible, showing people that there's something here that you think isn't.
'Little Ambassadors'
We're Mr. Mitchell's "little ambassadors." When we're on tour he's very strong about that, because when you say the word "Harlem," people think that you're on drugs, and live in the street, and have no sense of anything. So unfortunately we have to go overboard and show that we're not, that we're very solid people. It doesn't bother me, because I believe in what the company stands for. And the company doesn't stand for what is on stage. It stands for what it does to people's lives. And
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