Opinions of a Wandering Waif

borednschooled:

In ballet, blacks are still chasing a dream of diversity

NEW YORK — In 1933 Lincoln Kirstein wrote a passionate 16-page letter to his friend A. Everett Austin Jr., the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, introducing a man named George Balanchine…

NYCB was my favorite ballet.  I like them much better than ABT.  I would get annual subscriptions and loved the nights I’d get to take myself to dinner and then to the ballet, after work, back when I was working in Manhattan.  Since I moved to Los Angeles, in 81, it’s the only thing I’ve ever missed about New York.

Some time in the 1980’s, I went to see a production by Dance Theatre of Harlem, of The Firebird.  I’m mad at myself, that I cannot remember the name of the the ballerina who danced the lead…Daphne…gah, I can’t call it up, but I can remember her performance, as tho it were yesterday.  She was magnificent, she transcended being a person and became the bird.  It was the most mesmerizing dance I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.  My mom was a devoted balletomane and took me to the ballet, since I was a little girl.

It’s tragic that NYCB never achieved the racial mix it set out to do, because it is a poorer company because of that failure.  I’ve seen their productions of The Firebird, none of their principals ever danced as the DTH dancer did.  Their loss.

(via squeetothegee-deactivated201111)