Arthur Mitchell in 1963. He was one of the most popular dancers with the New York City Ballet in the 1950s and ’60s. (New York Times)
(Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)
John Malveaux of
writes:
Arthur Mitchell's death covered coast to coast
The New York Times
September 19, 2018
Arthur
Mitchell, a charismatic dancer with New York City Ballet in the 1950s
and ’60s and the founding director of the groundbreaking Dance Theater of Harlem, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 84.
His death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of heart failure, said Juli Mills-Ross, a niece. He lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Mitchell, the first black ballet dancer to achieve international stardom, was one of the most popular dancers with New York City Ballet, where he danced from 1956 to 1968 and displayed a dazzling presence, superlative artistry and powerful sense of self.
That charisma served him well as the director of Dance Theater of Harlem,
the nation’s first major black classical company, as it navigated its
way through severe financial problems in recent decades and complex
aesthetic questions about the relationship of black contemporary dancers
to an 18th-century European art form.
When asked in an interview
with The New York Times in January what he considered his greatest
achievement, he said, “That I actually bucked society, and an art form
that was three, four hundred years old, and brought black people into
it.”
His dancing in just two roles created for him by George Balanchine ensured him a place in American ballet history.
In the first, in “Agon,”
a trailblazing masterwork of 20th-century ballet that had its premiere
in 1957, Mr. Mitchell embodied the edgy energy of the piece in a
difficult, central pas de deux that Balanchine choreographed for him and
Diana Adams.
In this duet,
“Balanchine explored most fully the possibilities of linear design in
two extraordinary supple and beautifully trained human bodies,” the
dance historian and critic Lillian Moore wrote.
In the January interview, Mr. Mitchell described Balanchine’s challenge.
“Can
you imagine the audacity to take an African-American and Diana Adams,
the essence and purity of Caucasian dance, and to put them together on
the stage?” he said. “Everybody was against him. He knew what he was
going against, and he said, ‘You know my dear, this has got to be
perfect.’ ”
Five years after
“Agon,” Balanchine created the role of a lifetime for Mr. Mitchell as
the high-flying, hard-dancing, naughty Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream.” He danced the part, Walter Terry wrote, “as if he were Mercury
subjected to a hotfoot.”
Mr. Mitchell would forever be identified with the role.
One
of the last ballets Mr. Mitchell performed with City Ballet was
Balanchine’s “Requiem Canticles,” a tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. created shortly after he was killed in 1968.
Profoundly
affected by the King assassination, Mr. Mitchell began to work toward
establishing a school that would provide the children of Harlem with the
kinds of opportunities he had had.
He founded the Dance Theater of Harlem the next year with Karel Shook,
a friend and longtime mentor. In the early 2000s, the company, along
with its dance school, faced mounting debt, and it was forced to go on
hiatus in 2004. But it returned to performance in reduced form in 2012
and now tours regularly and performs at City Center. The school today
has more than 300 students.
Mr. Mitchell became artistic director emeritus of Dance Theater in 2011.
He
returned to the company in August to oversee a production of “Tones
II,” a restaging of one of his older ballets. It is to be performed in
April, to commemorate Dance Theater’s 50th anniversary.
No comments:
Post a Comment