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Arthur Mitchell, charismatic dancer of the New York City Ballet in the 50s and 60s and founding director of the Harlem Dance Theater, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 84 years old.
His death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of heart failure, said Juli Mills-Ross, a niece. He lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Mitchell, the first black ballet dancer to achieve international fame, was one of the most popular dancers of the New York City Ballet, where he danced from 1956 to 1968 and showed a dazzling presence, an artistic talent exceptional and a deep sense of self.
This charisma served him well as director of Harlem's Dance Theater, the country's first major black-and-white company, which has gone through serious financial problems over the last few decades and complex aesthetic questions about the relationship of dancers. 39, European art.
His dance in only two roles created for him by George Balanchine assured him a place in the history of American ballet.
In the first, in "Agon", a masterpiece of 20th century ballet that was born in 1957, Mr. Mitchell embodies the nervous energy of the play in a difficult and central pas de deux that Balanchine choreographed for him and Diana Adams. .
In this duet, "Balanchine has most fully explored the possibilities of linear design in two extraordinarily versatile and beautifully formed human bodies," writes historian and dance critic Lillian Moore.
In the January interview, Mr. Mitchell described Balanchine's challenge.
"Can you imagine the boldness of taking an African American and Diana Adams, the essence and purity of Caucasian dance, and bringing them together on stage?" "Everyone was against him. He knew what he was doing and he said, "You know darling, it must be perfect."
Five years after "Agon", Balanchine created the role of a life for Mr. Mitchell as a naughty and fearless Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Walter Terry wrote: "as if he was undergoing a hotfoot.
Mr. Mitchell would forever be identified with the role.
One of the last ballets Mr. Mitchell performed with City Ballet was Balanchine's "Requiem Canticles," a tribute to Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., created shortly after his death in 1968. Deeply affected by the assassination of King Mitchell started working to create a school that would give Harlem children the opportunities he had.
He founded the Harlem Dance Theater the following year with Karel Shook, a longtime friend and mentor. In the early 2000s, the company and its dance school faced growing debt and had to stop in 2004. But in 2012, she returned to performance and performs regularly at the City Center. The school now counts more than 300 students.
Mr. Mitchell became Artistic Director Emeritus of Dance Theater in 2011.
He returned to the company in August to oversee a production of "Tones II," a reenactment of one of his older ballets. It must be presented in April to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Dance Theater.
Arthur Adam Mitchell Jr. was born in Harlem on March 27, 1934, one of five children. His father was superintendent of the building and his mother, Willie Mae (Hearns) Mitchell, was a housewife.
In his childhood, he sang in a glee club of the Police League and in the Baptist Church choir of Convent Avenue.
A passionate social dancer all his life, Mr. Mitchell had his first formal training experience when a junior high school guidance counselor saw him dancing at a class party and told him proposed to audition at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan.
Mr. Mitchell worked so hard there that by stretching he tore his abdominal muscles and was hospitalized. But he soon performs with the school's modern dance ensemble and experiments with his own choreography. He has also performed in Europe and the United States with Donald McKayle (deceased in April), Louis Johnson, Sophie Maslow and Anna Sokolow, and he played an angel in 1952, in New York and Paris, of the Virgil Thomson-Gertrude Stein opera "Four Saints in Three Acts".
Mr. Mitchell was 18 when he began studying with Mr. Shook, a demanding ballet teacher who encouraged black dancers to practice ballet. Upon graduation from the High School of Performing Arts, she was offered a modern dance scholarship at Bennington College in Vermont and a ballet scholarship at the School of American Ballet in New York. He chose to study ballet, although there are virtually no outlets for black dancers on the ground.
Under Mr. Mitchell's sparkling smile and his sunny charm, there was a tenacity of belief and motivation that could be almost scary. In Lincoln Kirstein, founder with Balanchine School and City Ballet Company, Mr. Mitchell found a friend as stubborn. To enter the company's ballet corps, he told Mr. Kirstein, he must dance like a principal.
During his years of study, Mitchell played in modern dance and Broadway in "House of Flowers".
He made his debut this season in a leading male role in Balanchine's "Western Symphony", replacing Jacques d'Amboise, who was making a film. Years later, Mr. Mitchell was reminded of hearing gasps and at least one racist comment from the audience when he came on the scene that night.
A fast learner, he was often asked to take on important roles and replace unavailable key dancers while he was still in the ballet corps. In 15 years with City Ballet, he has also created roles in ballets John Taras and John Butler and in others by Balanchine.
In the haunting second half of Balanchine's "Metastaseis and Pithoprakta," Mitchell and Suzanne Farrell moved like unembellished rag dolls that Balanchine seemed to be launching on the stage. And Mitchell was inspired by his first tap lessons when Balanchine sought his help in the choreography for the Hoofer in "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," a rehearsal of the Broadway musical comedy "On Your Toes" in 1968. Cast of origin recalled.
"O.K., you have 16 measures," Balanchine told him. "I'll be back in an hour and you have something."
Between seasons, Mitchell has appeared in Broadway musicals and on television. He created his first professional dances by assisting the choreographer Rod Alexander in the Broadway musical "Shinbone Alley" in 1957, in which he also danced. Mr. Mitchell also worked as a choreographer and dancer at the Newport Jazz Festival that year and at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in 1960 and 1961.
Some of his greatest triumphs took place when City Ballet played in the Soviet Union in 1962 and, three years later, in Paris, where he conquered a rather cold audience by his little-known ballet style.
He was asked to organize the American Negro Dance Company to represent the United States at the first World Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal in 1966. The project failed due to lack of money, but in 1967, the United States information agency invited him to form the national ballet company of Brazil.
Mr. Mitchell has also taught ballet in studios, including Katherine Dunham School in New York and Jones-Heywood School of Ballet in Washington, two important centers for black dancers. At Jones-Heywood, dance critic Jean Battey wrote in The Washington Post that Mr. Mitchell "makes fun of boys as a drill sergeant".
This approach served him well in the early days of the Dance Theater of Harlem, which began with classes in a remodeled garage and made his official debut in 1971 with a three ballet program of Mr. Mitchell at the Guggenheim Museum.
Balanchine and Jerome Robbins contributed to the repertoire and, later in the year, the company was produced at the Spoleto Festival and in the Netherlands. The company had its first regular seasons in New York and London in 1974. In 1988, it went to the Soviet Union and shows were sold in Moscow, Tblisi and Leningrad.
The troupe went to South Africa in 1992, offering its educational programs wherever it occurred. As the company grew, Mitchell abandoned the choreography and focused on building a vast repertoire of contemporary classics and works.
The classic productions have been adapted to his black dancers, with costumes designed to flatter a variety of skin tones. His reconstruction of "Giselle" transferred ballet to Louisiana in the 19th century, with Creole figures, and the forest of "Firebird" became a lush jungle.
Mr. Mitchell also revived long-ignored ballets like Fokine's "Scheherazade" and Valerie Bettis's "A Streetcar Named Desire," and he encouraged black choreographers like Louis Johnson and Billy Wilson to create work for his dancers. Mr. Mitchell's honors include the 1971 Capezio Prize, the 1975 Dance Magazine Award and, in 1993, a Kennedy Center Award and a Haendel Medallion from New York.
No immediate family member survives.
Mr. Mitchell stated that he considered himself an African-American man with the training of a Russian aristocrat because of his ties with George Balanchine, born in Russia.
"My relationship with him was totally different from other dancers," he said. "It's not about which role will I dance? But what would you like me to do? Use me. And he did it.
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed to the report.
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