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Arthur Mitchell page 1, 2

Mostly, Mitchell was cast in NYCB performances regardless of color, with one noteworthy exception. Balanchine created the pas de deux in "Agon" for Mitchell, which he first performed with Allegra Kent in 1957. "Agon" -- its title translates as "the contest" -- is a plotless and brilliant ballet about the concept of struggle. Clad in white T-shirt and black tights, Mitchell provided a stark contrast to his female partner's white skin and plain black leotard. Dance critic Edwin Denby wrote that Mitchell's color "is neither stressed nor hidden; it adds to the interest." But reminiscent of Mitchell's SAB days, some audience members complained about a black man partnering a white woman. Balanchine shrugged off the protests. He also sidestepped requests that Mitchell not perform on television with the rest of the company, stating that if Mitchell did not dance, no one in the company would. And yet it wasn't until 1968, two years before Mitchell ended his 15-year tenure with NYCB, that he was allowed to dance the "Agon" pas de deux on TV. Three years prior to that momentous occasion -- which occurred on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" -- critic Allen Hughes lamented in the New York Times: "Mr. Mitchell and Miss Kent can dance this duet on theater stages around the world, but they cannot dance together on television in this country, at least not on commercially sponsored shows, which includes virtually all shows of major significance. Why? Television stations in the South would refuse to carry the shows, and advertisers would not like that."

Despite the adversity, Mitchell thrived as a dancer and imbued his signature role of Puck in Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with delightfully energetic mischief. His accomplishments as a NYCB principal dancer forged a legion of fans, among them the U.S. government, which asked Mitchell to help create the National Ballet of Brazil, serving as a kind of international ambassador of the arts. It was during his final trip to Brazil, in April 1968, that he learned Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Mitchell speaks of that moment in "Black Dance in America": "I could no longer wait for others to change things [for black Americans]. Here I am running around the world doing all these things, why not do them at home? I believe in helping people the best way you can, my way is through my art. But sometimes you need a splash of cold water in your face to make you see the right way to do it."

Mitchell was now a man with a plan. No longer content with being the black exception, he wanted to establish a dance school in Harlem to help kids build better lives for themselves. Through a stroke of excellent timing, black soprano Dorothy Maynor invited Mitchell to start a dance program at her Harlem School of the Arts. Within six months, the program was too big for Maynor's facility, prompting Mitchell to strike out on his own. Mentors Kirstein and Balanchine introduced him to various foundations, and in 1969, he received a Ford Foundation grant for $315,000, hastening the establishment of Dance Theater of Harlem as both a school and a company.

"I never actually started out to have a company," he told the New York Times. "I wanted to start a school to get the kids off the streets. But I couldn't tell the young people in the school to be the best they could when they had no place to go. As we began to get grants, we had to match those grants, so I had to have a group earning income. And I was making role models for the kids." Mitchell called on his former ballet teacher, Karel Shook, who at the time was ballet master of a Dutch company, to help direct Dance Theater of Harlem. Together they set up shop in a basement in Harlem's Morningside Heights, and Mitchell became a self-anointed "political activist through dance."

Within two months, the school grew from 30 to 400 students. Cleverly, Mitchell battled the "sissy" stigma attached to male ballet dancers by consciously not using the word "ballet" in the name of his organization. He relaxed the ballet dress code, so that instead of wearing tights, boys could attend class in cutoffs or jeans. Their classes, too, were less traditional; they danced to drum beats rather than Tchaikovsky and were shown the similarities between dance and basketball. Today, 1,000 students a year enroll in the school, where, like at Katherine Dunham's school, they study the entire theater process, including costume design and production, music, lighting and even typing.

Gaining acceptance within the Harlem community proved easier than coping with the more persistent struggle of finances. Anticipating a $1.7 million deficit, Dance Theater of Harlem took a six-month hiatus in 1970 while Mitchell sought funding. It has been a DTH theme with variations ever since. A $2 million deficit threatened the company's existence in 1991. Three years later, Mitchell had to downsize the company from 52 to 36 members to balance the 1995 budget. And perhaps most devastating of all for the DTH founder was a strike in 1997 by his own dancers, who were demanding better pay -- a bitter blow to Mitchell, who told Dance magazine, "I can't figure out the basic reason for it."

Surely Mitchell, now a master fund-raiser, recognizes the need for money, but the funding he secures is to support the organization. What he gives his dancers is the opportunity to perform. To ask for more seems ungrateful. This attitude should not have surprised the striking dancers. Seven years prior, original DTH principal member Virginia Johnson described Mitchell this way in Dance magazine: "He's got that energy you can feel from fifty thousand yards away, and he was fighting us also, because he wanted to establish a feeling of commitment behind him. Not in words, but by behavior he said, 'If you want to be here, it's going to cost you a lot.'"

Mitchell was, however, producing first-class ballet dancers. On Jan. 8, 1971, the company debuted at New York City's Guggenheim Museum. Critic Clive Barnes called the performance "a controlled avalanche." In retrospect, the term "snowball" would have been more apt, for despite the shaky finances and dance technique, Dance Theater of Harlem was on its way to becoming a major force. That summer, the company toured in Europe. In the fall, it relocated to larger digs in a renovated garage and warehouse on West 152nd Street. In 1973, it performed a prize-winning television special, "Rhythmetron" (choreographed by Mitchell), and a year later held its first exclusive New York City season. The repertory began to include more ambitious productions, and in 1981, DTH mounted a traditional version of "Swan Lake." But it was the 1984 rendition of the classic "Giselle" that garnered the attention. Dubbed "Creole Giselle," the ballet takes place in 19th century Louisiana rather than medieval Germany, with Giselle as the favorite mistress of a plantation owner. It was honored as the first American ballet to win England's Laurence Olivier Award for best new dance production. In fewer than 10 years, DTH was no longer an "avalanche" of dance, but a ballet company with the finesse of its forebears. Wrote critic Arlene Croce in 1987, "If there is such a thing as Afro-Russian, Dance Theater of Harlem has it."

Mitchell leveraged Dance Theater of Harlem's acclaim to break more ground. DTH was the first American ballet company to take part in the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cultural Exchange initiative, touring Russia for five weeks in 1988. More significant was a 1992 tour in segregated South Africa. For the occasion, Mitchell introduced the black children there to classical dance through a series of workshops. Encouraged by the young South Africans' enthusiasm, Mitchell quickly established the Dancing Through Barriers outreach program, an ongoing traveling university of lectures, classes and workshops for inner-city children in the United States and England.

It's been 30 years since Mitchell founded Dance Theater of Harlem, and he has racked up an armload of awards for it, among them the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors award in 1993. (In a twist of serendipity, Johnny Carson, whose television show first broadcast Mitchell in "Agon," was a fellow recipient that year.) Mitchell has also been designated as a living landmark of New York City and presented with the National Medal of Arts. He has received honorary doctorates from Harvard, Princeton and 11 other institutions, and last year he was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Hall of Fame.

It is indisputably deserved recognition, all of it, but the real rewards of Mitchell's accomplishments are the people who have flourished in and beyond his Harlem classroom -- from Ben Vereen to lawyers to doctors to DTH company member Bernard McClain, who in 1991 said to Newsday, "[Mitchell] has taught me wondrous things about myself. If he hadn't, I'd still be delivering water for Sparkletts."

As for Mitchell himself, a dancer now for 50 years, he's still itching to improve the world through dance. "What I'd really like to have is an international school of the allied arts," he told Smithsonian magazine. "I'd bring children from all over the world and call it Noah's Art. I'd put together a company with these young people and tour the world to show that regardless of race, class, creed or color, it's the quality of what you do that's important."
salon.com | June 29, 1999

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