This week, after more than a decade in that role, Johnson retires from Dance Theatre of Harlem. She starred in pieces as wide ranging as Giselle and A Street Car Named Desire, and then pivoted to arts reporting before returning to the dance theatre as artistic director.
Nicky Qumaina-Woo Virginia Johnson, the outgoing artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, poses in front of a painted portrait of founder Arthur Mitchell on Thursday, June 22, 2023. Despite that, Johnson went on to become a principal ballerina for DTH - the highest rank in a dance company - for 28 years. It turned out that Johnson's training had been very different from the style that Mitchell preferred.
#BRAZILIAN DANCERS NEAR ME PROFESSIONAL#
But he wanted more: a school to expose other Black and Latino kids to ballet and a professional company to offer the most talented a place to excel.
Already a star at New York City Ballet, he was one of the few Black principal ballet dancers in the world. So when Arthur Mitchell, a co-founder of the dance company, told her that he "didn't like my dancing, didn't think there's any hope for me, but said we'll see what we can do," she did what she had always done: kept her head up, and kept dancing. Her longtime teacher, Mary Day, had warned her that major ballet companies were not ready for a Black dancer, especially one as tall as she was. When Virginia Johnson auditioned to be a ballerina for the newly created Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969, she was already conditioned to steel herself against rejection.
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