A Continuum of Excellence: Dance Theatre of Harlem in Soraya Debut

He was a giant who carved a unique pathway for American dance in his own backyard: the tall, handsome, imposing son of Harlem who founded Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) in 1969, Arthur Mitchell. The venerable uptown ballet troupe nurtured by Mitchell in a street-facing converted Harlem garage has prevailed as home for classical dancers of color. DTH, which mixes not only skin tones but dance genres, is now in preparation for its debut at The Soraya on Saturday, Nov. 14—an evening that bodes a bracing showcase for a time-tested dance company, an occasion not to be missed.

Commandeering Mitchell’s labor of love since 2023 has been dancer/choreographer Robert Garland, an artistic director who oversees a sparkling ensemble in an aura of “now.” The company’s remarkably diverse repertory ranges from Geoffrey Holder’s legendary Dougla to a critically acclaimed production of The Firebird. Dance Theatre of Harlem is so with it that just this week it toasted host Sunny Hostin’s birthday with a performance of Garland’s African Waltz on “The View.”

Curiously, Arthur Mitchell’s legend has found renewed fascination. Nearly a decade after the figurehead’s death in 2018, he has a brand-new biography written by esteemed dance historian Lynn Garafola. Mitchell’s influence also underlies Garland’s upcoming program for The Soraya. Garland, a Juilliard graduate and dance-history buff, connected those dots in a recent call from New York. He recalled the milieu in which Mitchell left his roost as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet to devote the remainder of his career to building a vaunted art form with the underserved. At the time, circa 1968/69, the nation was roiling in extreme political and social upheaval.

Garland was impressed by a haunting description of Mitchell just after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. New York City Ballet’s key benefactor, Lincoln Kirstein, saw Arthur at the time as “a man possessed.” Mitchell entered the fray, treading a fine line of ballet boosterism in a minority community that had been shunned by it, while maintaining the high standard of his own training and practice at NYCB. Says Garland: “Mr. Mitchell took that possession and created this space for us.”

“We thought we would be beyond that moment [of racial turmoil] in this country,” Garland continues, “We are not. We have actually returned.” Garland turned to his choreography to express the complexities of America’s herky-jerky social and political evolution. His critically acclaimed work to six Stevie Wonder songs from the 1970s, Higher Ground, mixes classicism with vernacular Black dance as the planned powerful centerpiece on view on Nov. 14 at The Soraya.

If politics sparked Arthur Mitchell’s dramatic career change, Higher Ground is similarly tethered to our own era’s history. Garland’s ballet, in essence his response to the Black Lives Matter movement, was slated for a premiere in March 2020. The pandemic took precedence, and in a crushing occurrence for the arts, performances were nixed.

“It was a moment in time, a slice in time, when I made it in 2019,” recalls Garland, adding that a handful of years later his work still has legs. “It is still relevant,” he asserts.

“The message in the music can still reach audiences. It shines a light on an ongoing struggle. But it’s also uplifting.”

The program opener, Blake Works IV, was created for DTH in 2023 by “drastic classicist” choreographer William Forsythe to the propulsive and rigorously structured electro-soul songs of British singer and composer James Blake. “Forsythe has become kind of a home base for us,” explains Garland. “We’ve done two Forsythe ballets, including [the landmark] The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude to music by Schubert.” In an unusual observation, Garland notes that “the energy and the attack that is Forsythe fits dancers of African descent extremely well.”

To top up this juicy dance program is George Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, a “bravura tour de force of Balanchine at his best in the more classical space,” as Garland describes it. Arthur Mitchell biographer Lynn Garafola noted that Balanchine was “extremely generous” in gifting ballets to the burgeoning Dance Theatre of Harlem, an act Balanchine
undertook with few strings attached. 

A Balanchine afficionado, Garland remarks upon the great choreographer’s “love of jazz music,” which to his eye shows up “even in something more classical, like Donizetti.”

“His way of approaching the American sensibility within a classical context is one of his leading accomplishments. Because we’re a culture, a nation, of speed and syncopation, a little bit of coolness.” As for Donizetti? “There’s a ‘kick-ball-change’ in there too!,” says Garland with a laugh.

Repertory may vacillate over the years, but one DTH value is immutable: its close ties to community.

“One thing I always remember Mr. Mitchell telling me was it wasn’t just the assassination of Dr. King [that inspired his launch of DTH] but [a photo of] Ruby Bridges, the eight-year-old girl who integrated a school in New Orleans.” After that, he said he never wanted to see any little African American girl alone like that, ever again. And so he created the school, the company—just for that one little girl, and many others.”