Arthur Mitchell:
Founder and Artistic Director,
Dance Theatre of Harlem

Arthur Mitchell is known around the world as an accomplished artistic director, educator, choreographer and dancer. He has been a pivotal figure in the dance world for more than five decades.

Mr. Mitchell began his dance training at New York City's High School for the Performing Arts, where he was the first male student to win the coveted annual dance award. Upon graduation, he was offered two scholarships, one to Bennington College, and one to the School of American Ballet. He accepted the latter, and history was made in 1955 when Arthur Mitchell became the first African-American male dancer to become a permanent member of a major ballet company. He joined the New York City Ballet, debuting in the fourth movement of George Balanchine's Western Symphony.

He quickly rose to the position of principal dancer with New York City Ballet. During his 15 years with the company, he electrified audiences with his performances in a broad spectrum of roles. Mitchell's talent was evident in the neoclassical style of Agon, as well as in the lighthearted role of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, roles choreographed especially for him by the late George Balanchine. Mitchell's career also included performances in film, television, nightclubs and Broadway. He was a popular guest artist at several venues in the United States and abroad.

In 1968, upon learning of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mitchell was determined to do something to provide children in Harlem with the kinds of opportunities that had been given to him. That summer, he began giving ballet classes to local children in a Harlem church basement. In 1969, with financial assistance from the Ford Foundation, Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook, his teacher and mentor, founded and formally incorporated the Dance Theatre of Harlem as a school of the allied arts and professional ballet company. Now thirty-one years old, Dance Theatre of Harlem has grown into a multicultural institution of world renown, comprised of students and dancers from the United States and abroad.

Among the many honors and awards conferred on Mr. Mitchell are the 1997 Americans for the Arts' Arts in Education Award, the 1996 Independent Sector's John W. Gardner Leadership Award, the 1987 National Medal of Arts, the highest honor awarded by the President of the United States in the arts and humanities, the coveted MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the School of American Ballet Lifetime Achievement Award, the Barnard Medal of Distinction from Columbia University, and the 1994 Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1993, Mitchell was awarded "Living Landmark" status by the New York Landmark Conservancy. Also in 1993, Mitchell became one of the youngest recipients of the Kennedy Center Honor, celebrating "an extraordinary lifetime of contributions to American culture through the performing arts." That same year, Mayor David Dinkins presented Mitchell with the Handel Medallion, New York City's most prestigious award for artistic contribution.

Arthur Mitchell is a member of the Council of the National Endowment for the Arts. President Bill Clinton appointed him to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. He is an Honorary Patron of the Market Theatre Foundation in South Africa, a former member of the New York State Council on the Arts, and a former member of the New York City Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission. He was inducted into the NAACP's Image Awards Hall of Fame and, in 1999, the Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga, New York.

Mr. Mitchell has received honorary doctorate degrees from institutions nationwide, including Hamilton College, Brown University, City College of the City University of New York, Harvard University, The Juilliard School, The New School for Social Research, North Carolina School of the Arts and Williams College.

Photo courtesy the Heinz Awards