Classicism has no Color, Arthur Mitchell
Arthur Mitchell was born on March 27, 1934 in Harlem, New York. As a young man, Mitchell worked multiple jobs to help support his mother and siblings; his father was incarcerated when Mitchell was just 12 years old, leaving the young dancer as the primary provider for his family. “He shined shoes, mopped floors, delivered newspapers, and worked at a meat shop to help his family make ends meet.” As a child, Mitchell sang in a Police Athletic League glee club and in the Convent Avenue Baptist Church choir. He also took rudimentary tap classes in neighborhood dance schools.
While in junior high school, Mitchell’s guidance counselor recommended he audition for the New York City High School of Performing Arts—“the Fame school” as he called it; he was accepted in 1949. The School focused on jazz and modern dance, with minimal emphasis on ballet. Mitchell was so aggressive in his training there that in stretching, he tore his stomach muscles and was hospitalized. Upon recovery, he was back performing with the school’s modern dance ensemble and experimenting with his own choreography. Mitchell’s last year at School of Performing Arts is when he says racism first impacted his career:
“I don't think I came up against it in a personal way until I was at school - the High School of Performing Arts - and in my last year when we did auditions. That's when I ran into racism, as each time I wouldn't get a job because of my skin colour, and that made me feel very bad. So I figured, “What can I do to make people use me?” I was taking tap, modern, and jazz like everyone else, so I thought, if I take classical ballet that would make me unique - no black person was doing that.”
Because “no black person was doing that”, Mitchell felt the pressure to over-perform his white peers: “It was not natural for me. I was not very flexible and certainly not turned out, but I was very maniacal—I do things 150 per cent—and took every opportunity I could to study ballet.” His diligence soon paid off.
In 1952, Mitchell won the School’s Dance Award and graduated from School of Performing Arts. Lincoln Kirstein, cofounder of New York City Ballet, offered him a ballet scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York and Bennington College offered a modern dance scholarship to attend their school in Vermont. “Spurred on by the belief that blacks couldn’t perform ballet because their bodies were deemed ‘unfit for graceful movements,’ Mitchell chose to attend [SAB]”, where there were only two other students of color—Chita Rivera and Louis Johnson. It was at SAB that Mitchell first encountered George Balanchine, who would go on to create new works pivotal to Mitchell’s career. Mitchell would influence Balanchine’s choreography in ways that have only recently been acknowledged.
During his years at SAB, Mitchell also performed in modern dance and Broadway productions. He was on tour in Europe with the John Butler Dance Theater when the invitation came to join New York City Ballet for the 1955-56 season. Mitchell made his debut with City Ballet that year, performing a male lead in Balanchine’s Western Symphony, replacing an injured Jacques D’Amboise. “Years later, Mr. Mitchell recalled hearing gasps and at least one racist comment from the audience when he entered the stage that night.” Nevertheless, Mitchell remained with the company. In 1962, Mitchell was promoted to the rank of principal dancer—the first black principal to ever be with City Ballet. In his fifteen years with the company, Mitchell helped to create roles in ballets by John Taras, John Butler, and George Balanchine. Most notable of Balanchine’s collaborations with Mitchell were A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Slaughter on 10th Avenue, and Agon. When City Ballet toured to the Soviet Union in 1962, Mitchell won over initially chilly audiences with his precision and musicality.
In 1967, Mitchell was invited by the United States Information Agency to travel to South America to help form the National Ballet Company of Brazil. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, Mitchell returned to the US with the intent of taking social action, vowing to encourage young men and women of color to cultivate their talents. He cofounded Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969 with Karel Shook and $25,000 of his own money; later that same year DTH received $315,000 from the Ford Foundation. While leading Dance Theatre, Mitchell emphasized a balance of canonical works and new creations. By doing so, Mitchell made the point that dancers of color were just as capable of being delicate and ephemeral as their white counterparts, while also proving their relevance to the ever-evolving American dance scene. Mitchell “revived long-ignored ballets like Fokine’s Scheherazadeand Valerie Bettis’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and he encouraged black choreographers like Louis Johnson and Billy Wilson to create work for his dancers.”
Mitchell died on September 19, 2018 in New York City due to complications leading to heart failure. Mitchell’s honors include the 1971 Capezio Award, the 1975 Dance Magazine Award and, in 1993, a Kennedy Center Honor and a Handel Medallion from New York City.
By Victoria Holmes
Ballet Program Senior
Founding President Dance Studies Working Group