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Robert Garland has held many positions at Dance Theater of Harlem over many years \u2014 principal dancer, resident choreographer, school director, archivist and company webmaster. At long last, he has caught the prize title: artistic director.<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago, the company\u2019s executive director, Anna Glass, and Virginia Johnson, then its artistic director, invited him to dinner. To Garland, this was baffling. Normally his evenings were spent at Dance Theater\u2019s school, where he managed the pre-professional students. \u201cI was like, \u2018OK, why are you taking away from what I do?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, come on!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson, a former star dancer, told Garland that she had decided to step down<\/a>. Was he interested?<\/p>\n \u201cI took a long, hard think,\u201d Garland said. \u201cFor our organization \u2014 we\u2019re so particular as a family and as a culture. I thought it\u2019s best that we have someone that already understands that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And with more than five decades of ballet dancers and counting, that family and culture are significant. \u201cMoving the organization forward would depend not only on the art that the company produced, but also on the legacy through its alumni,\u201d Garland said. \u201cAnd that is a huge<\/em> thing.\u201d In April, an alumni platform will go live, a place, he said, \u201cwhere we could galvanize and connect and become a community.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Garland is big on history. His passion for linking ballet to the events of the real world, past and present, is an important part of his vision for Dance Theater, where he wants to educate the present generation about classical dance, about African American culture and history, and about how it all relates to Arthur Mitchell, who formed Dance Theater with Karel Shook after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.<\/p>\n Mitchell, the first Black principal at New York City Ballet under George Balanchine, wanted to prove to the world that ballet was for everyone \u2014 and every body \u2014 starting with children in Harlem. Garland, who danced with the company from 1985 to 1998, worked closely with him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cArthur Mitchell made a very crafty choice in making me resident choreographer and director of the school at the same time,\u201d Garland said. \u201cHe knew that I wanted to do the choreography thing, but that school part was going to train me in ways that I was not expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n He learned responsibility. Without that experience, Garland said he doubted he would be as at ease in his job now. From April 11 to April 14, he will preside over the company\u2019s 55th anniversary season at New York City Center<\/a> featuring three of his stellar works, which weave Black vernacular dance with classical ballet: \u201cNyman String Quartet No. 2,\u201d \u201cNew Bach\u201d and \u201cReturn.\u201d There will also be the company premiere of Balanchine\u2019s \u201cPas de Dix.\u201d Garland is deeply influenced by Balanchine, who was a mentor to Mitchell; when Dance Theater was formed, Balanchine gave him the rights to several ballets.<\/p>\n Garland said he planned to build on Balanchine\u2019s legacy with the company; staging \u201cPas de Dix\u201d (1955) is a step. Along with the dance itself, set to excerpts from Glazunov\u2019s \u201cRaymonda\u201d \u2014 it is classical ballet with Hungarian inflections \u2014 Garland wanted to celebrate the Native American ballerina Maria Tallchief, its original female lead.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you watch a video of Maria Tallchief, she was no joke,\u201d Garland said. \u201cMr. Mitchell loved her, loved<\/em> her.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For Garland, the dance\u2019s folksier Hungarian touches are inclusive. \u201cIf there ever was a working-class classical ballet, that\u2019s \u2018Pas de Dix,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt has pride to it. I had to remind my dancer Kamala Saara the other day that the piano is essentially a percussion instrument. So you\u2019ve got to hear it as not, some lilting, melodic thing, but as percussive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Garland chose Kyra Nichols, the former City Ballet principal known for her musicality and technique, to stage it. \u201cMr. Mitchell always said \u2018Get a ballerina,\u2019 and that\u2019s what I did. He said, \u2018Always have a ballerina, Robert. It\u2019s a different thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The ballerina\u2019s solo in \u201cPas de Dix\u201d also appears in Balanchine\u2019s \u201cCort\u00e8ge Hongrois\u201d (1973), along with some of the same music. Nichols\u2019s only experience with \u201cPas de Dix\u201d was dancing that solo in \u201cCort\u00e8ge,\u201d for which she was coached by Balanchine. \u201cIt was technical,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it was very much like, \u2018Get down low, dear.\u2019 \u2018You have to ask for money, money, money, money.\u2019\u201d He would ask her to bend as low as she could and to reach out as if collecting coins while moving in a circle and executing tiny steps on pointe.<\/p>\n \u201cAll those came back to me,\u201d she said, referring to his images.<\/p>\n She learned the rest of it \u2014 teaching herself the solos in her basement \u2014 from a Miami City Ballet video before spending two weeks at Dance Theater. \u201cThey\u2019re really good dancers, but they\u2019re just nice<\/em> people and easy to work with,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want rehearsals to end.\u201d<\/p>\n Garland has ideas about contemporary choreography, too. William Forsythe\u2019s \u201cBlake Works IV the Barre Project)\u201d will be reprised at City Center. And Garland is eager to commission a ballet by the modern choreographer Ronald K. Brown<\/a>. \u201cI think that my dancers are ready to address the range,\u201d Garland said. \u201cHe\u2019s such an artist and so committed to the African diaspora. And there aren\u2019t many people that really are doing that now. Sustaining that and giving him another space to do that in is important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n To Garland, the beauty of Dance Theater is the combination of ballet and African American culture, which creates a new aesthetic and a new idea. \u201cThe ballet aesthetic needs to be balanced with rhythmic acuity,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the rhythmic acuity of Ron\u2019s aesthetic and Forsythe\u2019s aesthetic are very similar. Weirdly. The experiment will be complete when Ron\u2019s in the studio and I\u2019m looking. But I just really love that they both rely on rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Balanchine, too, was all about rhythm \u2014 accents, phrasing, counts. But when Garland talks about the importance of Balanchine, it\u2019s about more than dance: \u201cHe was very prolific in particular ways that were essential to the fabric of America becoming what it was to be,\u201d he said, and he did it \u201cthrough this particular medium, which was ballet.\u201d<\/p>\n Garland sees how Balanchine was fascinated by the jazz aesthetic. \u201cAt some level, Mr. Mitchell was the vessel, particularly with \u2018Agon,\u2019<\/a> through which Mr. Balanchine was able to wrestle with both the cultural and artistic antecedents of his art form,\u201d Garland said.<\/p>\n \u201cAgon\u201d (1957) is the groundbreaking Balanchine ballet set to Stravinsky, which paired Mitchell with a white ballerina, Diana Adams. In a 2015 interview, Mitchell, who died in 2018<\/a>, said: \u201cThis is before racial equality. The fact that Mr. Balanchine took upon himself to put me with a Caucasian ballerina and to do a wonderful pas de deux was unheard-of.\u201d<\/p>\n As Garland sees it, \u201cMr. Balanchine was pretty much up on what was going on politically in the world as well. He knew that the person whose body he was creating on, other people in the world had other ideas about that body. And that\u2019s another part of his legacy that is just humongous, and people cannot underestimate the impact on the world that that choice made.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cIt\u2019s like for other dancers, fine if you want to just dance his ballets. I don\u2019t want to lose that history.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And what about his own choreographc aspirations? Garland is a much-admired creator of ballets that put a contemporary spin on rigorous classical vocabulary \u2014 he loves pop music as well as classical \u2014 but for now he is putting that work on hold in favor of establishing his relationship with his dancers.<\/p>\n When Johnson was in charge and Garland was the resident choreographer, he felt like \u201cthe babysitter for the night,\u201d he said. \u201cThen the parent came home, and I\u2019d leave and do what I did. Now I\u2019m the parent, and I have to care differently. And that\u2019s care not only from myself to the dancers, but also managing the choreographers\u2019 relationships with the dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n For his first ballet as artistic director next year, Garland wants to lean into the 1970s. But not like the way he did with \u201cHigher Ground,\u201d his acclaimed work<\/a> exploring social injustice through Stevie Wonder\u2019s music. \u201cI\u2019m going to go back to that other side, just for some fun,\u201d he said. \u201cAlso, I love these dancers. They\u2019re in a moment now where they are wanting to express their joy.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, he tested this theory. During a rehearsal break, he played \u201cMovin\u2019,\u201d by the funk group Brass Construction<\/a>. \u201cI saw them moving, and I was like, Oh, they\u2019re getting this, they\u2019re feeling this,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, Alexandra Hutchinson gets up and starts doing her thing. I love them in that way. They are fully ballet dancers and fully Black people. It\u2019s kind of like, hello? What else do you expect? This is who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n