As Virginia Johnson steps down as the artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, a look back at her storied career as both a visionary leader and pioneering company member
“In 2019, I had an epiphany,” says Virginia Johnson. For over a decade she’d served as the artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, after being appointed to the role in 2010 by co-founder Arthur Mitchell. He had tasked Johnson with reviving the school’s professional company, which had disbanded in 2004 due to financial issues. Having completed that task and uniquely expanded the troupe’s repertoire, Johnson was ready to step down and welcome someone else into the role.
Born in Washington, D.C., in 1950, Johnson began dancing as a young girl after a family friend opened a local ballet school, but it wasn’t until she saw London’s Royal Ballet performwhile on tour in the capital that she became fully infatuated with the art form. “It was mesmerizing,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘That’s possible? I’m going to do that.’” At the age of 13, Johnson was accepted to the Washington School of Ballet on scholarship, becoming its only Black student at the time.
Johnson entered NYU in 1968, when the modern dance craze was at its peak, which meant she was one of only a handful of students who regularly attended the university’s standing 9:00 a.m. ballet class. Still, she missed her rigorous ballet training. “Then somebody said to me, ‘Arthur Mitchell’s teaching ballet classes up in Harlem on Saturdays. Why don’t you go up and take class with him, and then come back and do the real dancing?’” she recalls.
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