Arthur Mitchell

Arthur Adams Mitchell Jr. was born on the twenty-seventh of March 1934 in Harlem, the second of the six children of Arthur Mitchell Sr. — a Black-Harlem building superintendent whose earlier trade was riveting — and Willie Mae Hearns Mitchell, a homemaker; both parents had come north from Savannah, Georgia. A scholarship to the High School of Performing Arts opened the door to formal training, and from there Mitchell went on to the School of American Ballet, where his gifts marked him for a company few then imagined would receive him.

On the eighth of November 1955 he made his debut with the New York City Ballet in George Balanchine's Western Symphony, becoming the first African American dancer to join that company. The following year he was elevated to principal, and Balanchine — who refused to bend to the prejudices of the age — created for him the celebrated pas de deux in Agon, partnering him with Diana Adams. For more than a decade Mitchell carried leading roles on the world's great stages, insisting through his very presence that classicism has no color.

Moved by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mitchell turned his art toward his community. In 1969, with his teacher Karel Shook, he founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem — a school and the first African American classical ballet company — beginning with a handful of children in a church basement and building it into an institution of international standing.

Honored with a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Medal of Arts, and a Kennedy Center Honor, Arthur Mitchell died on the nineteenth of September 2018, aged eighty-four. He opened a stage that had been closed, and generations of dancers now stand in the light he cleared for them.