and she said, you know, you are going to have a career. you are a really wonderful dancer but you will never be a ballerina because of the colour of your skin. it was following the assassination of martin luther king in 1968 that arthur mitchell decided to set up a dance company for black people in harlem. arthur mitchell was a principal dancer with new york city ballet and he was the first african american to achieve that level in a major american ballet company. he looked around at this neighbourhood and he said, these kids don t have a future. education is terrible, the schools are failing, nobody cares about them. they don t have a way of breaking this cycle of poverty, but if i teach them ballet, i m going to give them something else to draw from within themselves. we started with 30 children and two dancers, and everybody said i was crazy because i was using a european art form classical ballet. but i think that is the strongest technical foundation. once you have th
using a european art form classical ballet. but i think that is the strongest technical foundation. once you have that technique, you can do anything you want. classical ballet is impossibly difficult and it requires focus, it requires self discipline and it requires perseverance. in two months, i had 400 kids. in four months, i had 800 kids. so that shows there is a want, a need and a desire for this. i got to new york in the fall of 1968 and somebody told me that arthur mitchell was teaching a class up in harlem on saturdays and i could go up and take class and get a little ballet back in my life. and ijoined dance theatre of harlem in the spring of 1969. and right from the start, it was magic. see, it is too soft! you re doing. hit my hand. he was maniacal.
black people in harlem. arthur mitchell was a principal dancer with new york city ballet and he was the first african american to achieve that level in a major american ballet company. he looked around at this neighbourhood and he said, these kids don t have a future. education is terrible, the schools are failing, nobody cares about them. they don t have a way of breaking this cycle of poverty but if i teach them ballet, i m going to give them something else to draw from within themselves. we started with 30 children and two dancers and everybody said i was crazy because i was using a european art form, classical ballet. but i think that is the strongest technical foundation and once you have that technique you can do anything you want. classical ballet is impossibly difficult and it requires focus, it requires self discipline and it requires perseverance.