DANCE THEATRE
Dance Theatre
of Harlem
OF HARLEM
7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25
Liberty Theater • 1203 Commercial St., Astoria
TicketsWest: 503-224-8499
Liberty Theater box offi ce open from 2
p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Satur-
day and two hours before the show
Tickets begin at $25, with 20 percent off for
students, seniors, and groups of eight or more
Submitted photo by Matthew Murphy
Dancers of the Dance Theatre of Harlem perform “Gloria.”
Submitted photo by Rachel Neville
Ashely Murphy, of Shreveport, Louisiana, was accepted into the DTH Company in 2003 and toured with them throughout the
United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Greece.
This multi-cultural ballet theater brings its
neoclassical technique to Astoria for the fi rst time
“
“Using arts to ignite the mind.” That’s the
philosophy of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The
New York City-based school has been introduc-
ing youth to dance, and the DTH Ensemble has
been inspiring audiences at schools, colleges and
festivals with their lecture-demonstrations for
decades. The famous touring company, howev-
er, was brought to a close in 2004.
Happily, the dance theater began touring
again in 2013. It has been three decades since
they performed in Oregon, and this Saturday,
$pril 2, they will appear for the ¿ rst time in $s-
toria, at the Liberty Theater.
The original touring company grew to 44
dancers and two semi trucks full of costumes
and props; the result was over $2,000,000 in
debt. The new company is 18 dancers and they
now travel by airplane. Their costumes suggest
4 | April 23, 2015 | coastweekend.com
that much material has been eliminated to save
on overweight baggage expenses.
“We’ll never be 44 dancers again,” says Vir-
ginia Johnson, founding member and current
artistic director. “The world has changed, but I
don’t need a spectacle. I need to be exquisite and
life-changing.”
Dance Theatre of Harlem was founded by
two accomplished artists: dancer Arthur Mitch-
ell and Washington-born choreographer and bal-
let teacher Karel Shook. In 1955 Mitchell was
selected by *eorge %alanchine to be the ¿ rst
African American dancer with the New York
City Ballet. The next year he was the compa-
ny’s principal dancer, performing in all its major
ballets. Although he danced with white partners
throughout the world, he could not perform on
American television until1965.
Mitchell had grown up on the streets and in
the gangs of Harlem, his father in jail, but he was
helped by a guidance counselor who encouraged
him to apply to the High School of Performing
Arts. After the assassination of Martin Luther
King Jr., Mitchell returned, determined to pro-
vide opportunities for other children to expe-
rience dance. It was a dif¿ cult time to create a
dance school in the inner city. Memories of riots
were fresh, and police and military repression
was always in the background. It required the
same sort of miracle that brought Mitchell to
prominence as a dancer.
Mitchell and Karel, who had been his teach-
er, began in a garage with $25,000 of Mitchell’s
own money. A year later he received $350,000
in matching funds from the Ford Foundation. In
1971 the professional company made its debut at
the Guggenheim Museum and later collaborated
with the New York City Ballet.
Dance Theatre of Harlem was on its way.
The company went on to perform around the
world to sold-out performances and rave re-
views, all the time maintaining the dance
school in Harlem, which each year serves over
a thousand children from all over the country.
It has matured into a multi-cultural institution
of dance and allied theater arts, without losing
the incredible energy and verve for which it has
always been known.
And now they have arrived in Astoria, Ore-
gon.
The DTH repertory springs from neoclassi-
cal technique, which enables artists to dance in a
variety of styles. While the program varies, you
will likely see works like “New Bach,” choreo-
graphed by Robert Garland, who has also cho-
reographed for the New York City Ballet and the
Royal Ballet. Christopher Huggins, formerly of
the Alvin Alley Company, has choreographed
“In the Mirror of the Mind.”
The high point of the evening may be “Danc-
ing on the Front Porch of Heaven (Odes to Love
and Loss),” choreographed by Ulysses Dove for
the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1993. Dove, who
died of AIDS-related disease three years later,
had recently lost 13 close friends and relatives,
including his father. Of his work Dove said, “I
want to tell an experience in movement, a story
without words, and create a poetic monument
over people I loved.” The dance is set to Esto-
nian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memory
of Benjamin Britten.”
“Ballet is a complex and beautiful human
endeavor, the experience of which can change
lives,” says Virginia Johnson. “Ballet does have
a color. It is the rich color of humanity. That’s
what Dance Theatre of Harlem is about — open-
ing minds to what is possible.”
Saturday will be a night to remember.
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