Donald Byrd (born 1949) is an American modern dance choreographer, known for themes relating to social justice, and in particular, racism.
Career
For 24 years, beginning 1978, Byrd was the founding artistic director of Donald Byrd/The Group, which toured extensively, nationally and internationally until 2002, when he suspended operations due to financial duress. The Group was based in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1983 and in New York City from 1983 to 2002. For 22 years, since 2002, Byrd has been artistic director of The Spectrum Dance Theater, based in Seattle. He is credited with having elevated Spectrum to a company of national rank.[1]
Spectrum Dance Theater premiered Byrd's work Shot in January 2017, at the Seattle Repertory Theater. The performance included multimedia (video) and even a lecture in the middle in an acclaimed albeit visceral depiction of the 2016 fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the pleading of his wife, Reykia Scott – "Stop! Please don't shoot!" "Don't shoot him! Don't shoot him! He has no weapon! He has no weapon. Don't shoot him!"[14] Charlotte is about 49 miles (79 km) from New London, Byrd's place of birth.
2019 premier
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Byrd's work Greenwood on December 6, 2019, at City Center in New York City. Byrd described his work as "theater of disruption" ... "it disrupts our thinking about things, especially, in particular, things around race." The dance performance addresses a 1921 racist mob attack in Tulsa's segregated Greenwood District, which, at the time, was one of the country's most affluent African-American communities, known as "America's Black Wall Street."[2][3][4] Byrd uses the Rashomon method, depicting three scenarios of what might have happened in an elevator.[15]
As dancer and educator
Byrd, in 1972, was a member of the Twyla Tharp Dance Company; and in 1976, he was a member of Gus Solomons Jr.'s, Dance Company.
Byrd has been member of board of directors for the Dance Theater Workshop and Dance USA in Washington, D.C., the national service organization for professional dance, established in 1982.
Awards
Special mention, 3rd Grand Prix International Video Dance Festival, 1990
Emerging Dance Award, Metropolitan Life Foundation
Family and growing up
Byrd was born July 21, 1949, in New London, North Carolina, to Jeter Byrd Jr., and Emmarene Clark (maiden; 1928–1999). His parents divorced shortly after he was born; and soon after that, with his mother, he moved from New London to Clearwater, Florida. Donald's mother remarried and, around the time he was entering the fifth grade, she and her new husband moved to the Midwest. Donald stayed in Clearwater and was raised by his maternal grandmother, Willie Mae Clark (née Willie Mae Chester; 1910–1993),[v] through high school, until he graduated 1967 from Pinellas High, a bygone segregated school (closed after June 1968) in the Greenwood section of downtown Clearwater.[vi] Growing up, his first love, according to biographies, was music. To that end, Byrd studied classical flute; and as a flutist, he became a member of the Pinellas Youth Symphony. He was also a drum major with the Pinellas High School band – the Panthers Marching Band. In high school, Byrd participated in theatrical projects and the debate team.
Byrd's first exposure to dance came when he was 16 years old. Two dancers from Balanchine's New York City Ballet – Edward Villella and Patricia McBride – conducted a lecture-demonstration in Clearwater, which Byrd attended. The dancers left an impression on Byrd, though it was several years later before he began formal training in dance.[16]
Higher education
In 1967, Byrd attended Yale University, initially majoring in philosophy, though he had thoughts of becoming an actor. At Yale, Byrd attended every play produced by the School of Drama and the Long Wharf Theatre. Yale was also where Byrd experienced overt racism for the first time, in the form of slurs and insults, these contrasting with the institutionalized racism of segregation that he had encountered growing up in the South.
The summer after his first year, Byrd's prowess on the flute earned him the opportunity to join an ensemble that toured Europe. On his return from Europe, Byrd decided to leave Yale, where he did not feel entirely welcome, and enroll in Tufts University in Boston.
One of the first friends Byrd made at Tufts was William Hurt. By this time, Byrd had begun to study acting seriously. It was from Hurt that Byrd first heard about the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. On Hurt's suggestion, Byrd attended a performance of Ailey's signature work, Revelations. As put by his biography in Encyclopedia.com, "the performance was indeed a revelation for Byrd; for the first time in his life, he became aware of the theatrical power of dance."[3]
Among many others, Byrd has collaborated with composer Mio Morales on several works, including:
1988: Shards, choreography by Donald Byrd; music by Mio Morales
1993: The Minstrel Show, acts for coons, jigaboos, and jungle bunnies, presented by Dance Theater Workshop; artistic direction and choreography by Donald Byrd; original music by Mio Morales
Drastic Cuts, choreography by Donald Byrd; music by Mio Morales
1988: Partite, presented by Donald Byrd/The Group; choreography by Donald Byrd; music by Mio Morales
Organizations
The Donald Byrd Dance Foundation, Inc., a New York not-for-profit corporation established February 7, 1985
Quotes
I felt that something about the civil rights movement didn't take, that people didn't get it, that if these kids were behaving that way, it was a clear indication that something didn't work.
(commenting on the 1989 slaying of Yusef Hawkins, a 16-year-old African American, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who was attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, beaten, and killed)
The most disturbing thing about Donald Byrd's Minstrel Show is this: that men and women in blackface, recreating racial parodies recognized by most people today to be unfair, can nonetheless make you laugh. And you laugh in perhaps exactly the way people laughed during those first 19th century sendups of (over and over) the same witless, clowning, superstitious black slave.
Harlem Nutcracker, discussion by Byrd, choreographed by Byrd, performed by the Spectrum Dance Theater (2019)
Notes and references
Notes
^Cristyne Lawson (née Christine Elizabeth Lawson; born 1935) was an early collaborator with Alvin Ailey. The two, in 1957, were cast in leading roles in Jamaica – "the Lena Horne musical."
^Gloria Bowen (Gloria Ann Bowen; born 1943) went on to teach at UCLA. She studied with Alexander Godunov and Pearl Lang. In 1990, Gloria relocated to Las Vegas and opened a studio for fencing and ballet with fencing master Mel North (né Melvyn Robert North; born 1924), who she married in 1990. Mel was Head Fencing Coach at UCLA for 10 years. Bowen, who is 5 feet 1 inch (155 cm), has been known as the "Petite Ballerina."
^Tina Yuan (née Wen-Shiu Yuan; born 1947) is most known as a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Yuan was born in Shanghai, but, when she was one, her parents fled to Taiwan, where she grew up. She was married to Richard Hanale Ornellas (born 1945) from 1971 to 1978. After her divorce, in the same year, 1978, she changed her legal name to Tina Wen-Shiu Yuan in a petition to become a United States naturalized citizen.
^Sandra Fawn Neels (born 1939) was, from 1963 to 1973, a dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. She went on to become a prolific choreographer. Since 1974, she has been a dance theater educator at colleges, universities, arts institutes, and pre-professional programs. Since about 1992, she has been on the faculty at Winthrop University.
^Byrd's Harlem Nutcracker, premiered 3 years after the death of his grandmother. His work prominently and lovingly features a grandmother.
^Pinellas High School, in Clearwater, served African-0American students from Largo, Clearwater, Dunedin, Safety Harbor, and Tarpon Springs from 1934 to 1968, when desegregation commenced. The school was originally on Madison Avenue, but in 1954, a new school was built on Palmetto Street, the current site of Clearwater Intermediate. ("Remembering Pinellas High School," by Valerie Kalfrin, February 28, 2012), Patch Media, February 28, 1928)
^Cambridge School of Ballet was founded in 1953 by Esther Brooks (née Esther Magruder; born 1925), in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Brooks had studied at the School of American Ballet. She was married to American poet Peter Chardon Brooks (1918–2000), who was a great-great grandson of Peter Chardon Brooks (1767–1849) and grandson of Shepherd Brook0s (1837–1922). Esther had previously been married to American violinist Paul Makanowitzky (1920–1998). By way of her sister, Agnes Ethel Magruder (maiden; 1921–2013), Esther was a sister-in-law of Armenian American painter Arshile Gorky (1904–1948).
^The Harvard Summer Dance Center was established in 1972 by Nelson Goodman (1906–1998) and Martha Armstrong Gray (née Martha Kneass Armstrong; born 1946) in collaboration with Harvard University. At Harvard, Goodman was producer of the Arts Orientation Series from 1969 to 1971, consultant in the Arts for Summer School from 1971 to 1977, and Director of the Dance Center. Gray served as Director of The Harvard Summer Dance Center for five years.
^A Formal Response was a Byrd production in reaction to various negative reviews in 1986. The production included a video Byrd reading and then burning the clippings. (The Boston Globe, July 5, 1955, p. 23)
^Marc Kirschner founded TenduTV, Inc., in 2008, in New York City. He is General Manager.
References
^"Probing an Ugly Black Stereotype – Donald Byrd Brings Back the Minstrel Show," Joan Katherine Smith, San Francisco Examiner, May 19, 1993, p. C5 (accessible vianewspapers.com; subscription required)
^"Donald Byrd: Prodigal Talent," by Iris M. Fanger, Dance Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 7, July 1993, p. 42; ISSN0011-6009 (accessible viaProQuest223471938, Research Library database; subscription required)
^"Dance – Donald Byrd's Dance of Reality: The Choreographer's 'Minstrel Show' Will Bring Audiences Face to Face with Themselves on Issues of Race," by Chris Pasles, Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1993, Calendar, p. 5 (accessible viaProQuest282068104, US Newsstream database; subscription required)
^"Choreographer Comes Home – Donald Byrd Says the World Opened up for Him in the Tampa Bay Area, Where He First Discovered Dance," by John Fleming, Tampa Bay Times, October 10, 1999, pps. 1F & 6F (accessible viaNewspapers.com; subscription required)
^"Arts & Films: Dance Notes – A Choreographer Simmers Down," by Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, July 5, 1988, p. 23 (accessible vianewspapers.com; subscription required)
^"Dance: Donald Byrd Troupe at Bessie Schönberg Theater, by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, November 7, 1983, p. C24 (accessible viaNew York Times; subscription required)
^"Minstrel Show as Social Commentary – Dance: A Racially Motivated Slaying Prompted Choreographer Donald Byrd to Create a Satirical Look at the Often Derogatory Song-And-Dance Tradition," by Frankie Wright, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1992, Section F, pps. 1 (link) & 26 (link) (accessible viaNewspapers.com; subscription required)
