by Monica Stephenson | Feb 23, 2024 | Black History Month, Pointe+, Profiles
Sandra Fortune-Green is proof that success is not always immediate, but perseverance is lasting. In 1973, at the age of 22, she began training diligently for the second Moscow International Ballet Competition. She was the only American candidate that year—and she says...
by Pointe Magazine | Feb 23, 2023 | Black History Month, Pointe+, Videos
We recently had the pleasure of speaking with two groundbreaking artists and colleagues: Lauren Anderson, Houston Ballet’s first Black principal ballerina (and current Houston Ballet Academy associate director of Education and Community Engagement), and Harper...
by Zita Allen | Feb 23, 2021 | Instagram, Profiles
Cicely Tyson, the legendary 96-year-old Black actress whose February 16 funeral at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church was attended by, among others, Tyler Perry, Lenny Kravitz, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, is remembered for performances that transcended...
by Julia Guiheen | Feb 17, 2021 | TBT
It’s not every day that you get to see two living legends share the same stage. In 2007, Carmen de Lavallade and Desmond Richardson, trailblazers generations apart, premiered Dwight Rhoden’s Precious Blood at The Joyce Theater in New York. In this clip,...
by Zoe Phillips | Feb 8, 2021 | Instagram, News, The Latest, Training
Last week, Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet celebrated the start of Black History Month with the launch of The Constellation Project, a star-studded online exhibition of dance history. The project maps the lives of six influential Black dancers—Arthur Mitchell, Mel...
by Chava Pearl Lansky | Feb 17, 2020 | Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit, Profiles, Viral Videos
Yesterday, the first of Nike’s new Common Thread video series dropped, and we were thrilled to see that it featured dancers; namely, Dance Theatre of Harlem member (and June/July 2017 Pointe cover star) Ingrid Silva, and Florida-based ballet student Alex Thomas....
by Amy Brandt | Feb 21, 2018 | Profiles, TBT
Whenever Debra Austin jumped, she soared—and not only onstage. Invited by George Balanchine to join New York City Ballet at age 16, she was the first African-American woman to enter the company. She later joined Zurich Ballet, returning to the U.S. to accept a...