DTH Vol. 1 No. 2 - Early Students

Arthur Mitchell teaching at DTH school 1969-70. Photo by Marbeth.

"Despite his own success (indeed, because of it), Mitchell realized the plight of the black classical dancer. He was the only black premier in North America. Mitchell occasionally saw a black student, usually male, at the School of American Ballet but onstage the faces were white. 'I have to bite my tongue,' Mitchell says drily, 'when people get excited about the dancers in DTH, as though a black girl in toe shoes is a creature from outer space! There were always black classical dancers in America--they just never got on stage! And when a black dancer made it into ballet, there was prejudice against him dancing with white partners.' When Mitchell was studying at SAB, parents objected to him taking class with their daughters.

Arthur teaching DTH students. Photo by Marbeth.

"'For every one black artist in ballet, there may have been one hundred black girls and boys with the potential for the classical technique,' Mitchell says. 'The prejudice against the black ballet dancer began in the classroom, and that's where it really affected us. 'Someone, sometime, somewhere, decided that black people did not have the right physique for ballet. This decision became arbitrary. No one realized that black boys and girls, just like white boys and girls, come in different shapes and sizes-that some children have an obvious potential for the classical technique, and some do not. The qualifications of a ballet dancer are not in the color of his skin but in his physique and technique. [...] what bothers me is that, for all these years, there was a waste of black classical talent. [...] Who can estimate how many black danseurs and black ballerinas were lost, because of a stupid prejudice against the black classical technician!'"

Written by Olga Maynard in Dance Magazine, 1975

Photos by Marbeth from 1969-1970

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