Celebrate 40 Years of Harlem Dancing Dreams

The Dance Theatre of Harlem has kept ballet in Harlem for 40 years.

ByABC News via logo
April 15, 2009, 8:10 PM

April 16, 2009 — -- For 40 years the Dance Theatre of Harlem has helped craft African American dancers into classically trained ballet performers.

While today, the company diversity extends beyond just African American students, the one thing that hasn't changed is the school's passion for the arts, which was instilled by co-founder Arthur Mitchell.

"When you're in the process of doing things, you never think of time," Mitchell said. "I'm a man with a mission. I'm driven."

The so-called pied piper of dance first opened the school's doors in 1969, driven, in part, by the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

Mitchell, whose dance career already had proved naysayers wrong, headed back to his native Harlem and helped others achieve their dancing dreams.

"I said, 'Put your money where your mouth is, Mitchell, and start something in the community where I was born; and get the young people off the streets and give them a sense of purpose, focus and a sense of pride,'" Mitchell said. "So we started a school and that's how it all started."

Another reason that prompted Mitchell to start the school was a seemingly common misconception about African American dancers.

"There was a fallacy that blacks could not do classical ballet. And I kept saying, 'Who said this?' No one could tell me who said it," Mitchell said.

So he trained his dancers and instilled in them a sense of pride.

When the legend walks into a room filled with ballet dancers, he demands nothing but the best.

And the students most certainly deliver.

Mitchell and internationally recognized ballet teacher Karel Shook started the school as an ally of the arts. Mitchell has continued to lead the school since Shook's 1985 death.

Today, the Dance Theatre of Harlem offers extensive courses in music, dance, costuming and theater to children as young as pre-schoolers and as old as senior citizens.

But before he helped his dancers learn their first step, he glided across the stage following his own dancing dreams.

Mitchell, a trained classical ballet dancer, was one of the first African American principal dancers for the acclaimed New York City Ballet under George Balanchine.