Celebrating Carmen De Lavallade's Fifty-Year Career - Carmen de Lavallade is honored for her fifty years of dance involvement at the Hudson Theatre in New York City

Dance Magazine, August, 1999 by Robert Tracy

NEW YORK CITY--"She is a luminous, articulate artist, a dream to work with and an inspiration to everyone who shares in her presence," says Donald McKayle of Carmen de Lavallade, who celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of her artistry this year. Her career as a performer, dancer, actress, director, writer, teacher, choreographer, coach, and mentor was celebrated with a gala anniversary tribute at the Hudson Theatre on June 5 and will continue with her own performances with Gus Solomons jr and Dudley Williams this fall.

De Lavallade's Creole family migrated from Louisiana to California in the twenties. Carmen was born in Los Angeles on March 6, 1931. Of African, Indian, and Caucasian descent, she developed into an artist whom Duke Ellington called one of the most ravishing in the world. Her cousin, Janet Collins, was the first person in their family to embrace an artistic life, dancing with Katherine Dunham and Talley Beatty, and becoming the first black dancer to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Collins later became de Lavallade's artistic guide and one of a number of mentors.

At fourteen, de Lavallade began studying ballet and modern dance. Soon after, she received a scholarship to study at Lester Horton's Dance Theater. With Horton's stage as her classroom, de Lavallade learned about music, painting, sculpture, lighting, scenery, acting, ballet, and modern and ethnic dancing. Horton had been developing his radical technique by experimenting with Bella Lewitzky. When Horton and Lewitzky split artistically, de Lavallade stepped into Lewitzky's place as Horton's primary muse, dancing Salome in The Face of Violence after Lewitzky generously taught her role to the teenager. After witnessing her debut with Horton's company, Lena Horne adopted de Lavallade as her protegee in 1950. Horton also arranged for de Lavallade to study ballet with the great Carmelita Maracci because "she can give you what I can't," he said. "Without a doubt, everything each of them taught me I still use today," says de Lavallade.

De Lavallade had an enormous influence on the young Alvin Ailey both through her example as a performer and her introduction to Horton's technique. After Horton's death in 1953, Ailey was thrust into the position of resident choreographer, and de Lavallade's spirit became an early source of inspiration.

An astonishing beauty, de Lavallade was hired by Twentieth Century-Fox to appear in a number of films in the early fifties. Her most successful was Carmen Jones (1954), in which she danced with Ailey in sequences choreographed by Herbert Ross.

When Ross was hired to take over the direction of the musical House of Flowers, he hired de Lavallade and Ailey to make their Broadway debuts in 1954. There she met the distinguished Trinidadian artist Geoffrey Holder, whom she married in 1955. "She is the most beautiful woman in my world," says Holder. "She is also a magnificent woman to live with, an exceptional dancer, and an incredible mother. God gave me a muse, and her name is Carmen." Late in 1956 de Lavallade danced Madame Zzaj in Duke Ellington's CBS-TV spectacular "A Drum Is a Woman," choreographed by Beatty, and in February, 1957, bore a son, Leo. Later that year she appeared as the leading dancer in the NBC-TV premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors.

After starring on Broadway and with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, de Lavallade performed in John Butler's opera and television work. Her favorite Butler piece was Carmina Burana (1959), which also starred her friend Mary Hinkson, the sublime Graham principal. Butler also choreographed Portrait of Billie [Holiday] (1960) on de Lavallade. Through Butler she met Agnes de Mille and subsequently danced in de Mille's 1965 productions of The Four Marys and The Frail Quarry as a guest artist with American Ballet Theatre.

Despite her success, she did face the segregation that was a part of dance during that era: she was not allowed to perform with Glen Tetley on The Ed Sullivan Show because a white man could not partner a black woman on TV. Instead she danced with Ailey dancer Claude Thompson. "We are not going to fly out of orbit if we create a golden race," she said recently, referring to people of mixed descent. "I know it makes people very nervous, but loosen up, it's the twenty-first century."

Although Holder and de Lavallade often worked together and he created two of her trademark solos, Three Songs for One (1963) and Come Sunday (1968), the two have not been limited by their partnership. "God bless Geoffrey Holder," says de Lavallade. "He let me do what I wanted to do, and we are not in competition with each other."

She performed with Josephine Baker, Donald McKayle, Louis Johnson, Sophie Maslow, and on and off with Ailey. In his 1958 Ariette Oubliee, Ailey played a Marcel Marceau-like character yearning for the moon (de La vallade). Ailey choreographed The Roots of the Blues (1961) after de Lavallade suggested that he join her in Stella Adler's acting classes. "It turned out to be a dynamite duet," remembers de Lavallade. Ailey's 1964 homage to Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, The Twelve Gates, was created for de Lavallade and James Truitte. "I was the fallen woman in a wild red velvet dress," she says.