When you think of Black ballerinas, names like Misty Copeland or Janet Collins may come to mind. But did you know that a classical ballet dancer from L.A. named Bernice Harrison predated both of them?
When you think of Black ballerinas, names like Misty Copeland or Janet Collins may come to mind. But did you know that a classical ballet dancer from L.A. named Bernice Harrison predated both of them?
Today, the lesser-known story of Harrison’s rise to become the first Black prima ballerina, and the legacy of the First Negro Classical Ballet Company. Read the full transcript here.
Host: L.A. Times producer Ashlea Brown
Guest: Kenneth Marcus professor of history at the University of Laverne
More reading:
First Negro Classical Ballet and Bernice Harrison
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Misty Copeland, Calvin Royal III and the rarity of a black couple dancing lead roles
Gustavo: Hey, what's up? It's Gustavo Arellano. Every once in a while I pass over the mic to one of my awesome colleagues, and today I handed over to one of my jefas, Times producer Ashlea Brown, as we wrap up Black History Month, she wanted to share with ustedes a piece of California Black history, and Ashley found that through a pioneering dancer of the 1940s. Jefa, take it away.
Ashlea: Black History Month is so important. It's one month we can really celebrate and embrace the contributions Black people have made to the world. Like with the creation of the three light traffic lights. That was by a Black man named Garrett Morgan. That home security system? That was invented by a Black woman named Marie Van Britten Brown, or even a tasty potato chip. That was also created by a Black man named George Crum.
Those are just the very few of the inventions Black people have contributed to our society, not to mention the major cultural contributions in politics,
AP politics clip: I, Ketanji Brown Jackson, do solemnly swear That I will administer justice.
Ashlea: Music
AP music clip: Beyoncé now has 32 Grammys, more than anyone ever.
Ashlea: Art
Ap arts clip: I wrote this book to honor the 6-year-old Viola, and it has just been such a journey. I just EGOT.
Ashlea: and dance.
Ap dance clip: Normally it's like a no-no to do Michael Jackson because it's really hard to emulate and even come close. But I was like, Michael Jackson who?
Ashlea: As we nearly wrap up Black History Month, I wanted to find a story on someone who we don't hear about because we simply don't know their story, whether that be because of a lack of coverage written about them, or the time period of what was going on around their existence.
Ashlea: When you think of ballerinas, Black women don't typically come to mind. You might know Misty Copeland,
AP clip: Misty Copeland was named a principal dancer, the first African American ballerina to achieve that status in the 75-year history of the American Ballet Theater.
Ashlea: or Janet Collins,
janet collins clip: Ballerina Janet Collins rose to new heights with her selection as premier dancers with the Metropolitan Opera
Ashlea: But most people don't know that a woman from L.A. named Bernice Harrison predates both of them. Back in the 1940s, she was recorded as the first African American prima ballerina to perform on point as part of the First Negro Classical Ballet.
Ashlea: I'm Ashlea Brown. You're listening to The Times Essential News From the L.A. Times. It's Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. Today we explore the lesser known story of Bernice Harrison and the first Negro classical ballet.
Ashlea: Kenneth Marcus is a professor of history at the University of Laverne, and he's also one of the very few people that have studied and know Bernice's story. Kenneth, welcome to The Times.
Kenneth: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Ashlea: All right, Kenneth, Bernice's story has to start somewhere. Who was she?
Kenneth: Bernice was a recent immigrant to Los Angeles. She had come from Washington, D.C., came out in the 1930s and she was also a seamstress and was a homemaker with three children.
She had two boys and a girl. And it seems that she, um, and her husband didn't have much money. She and her husband didn't have much money, but she wanted her only daughter, Angela, to have that, that she could dance ballet and she wanted specifically that she could dance ballet and not other forms of dance that African Americans were commonly pushed towards. And so when she heard that there was a studio opening up not far from her neighborhood, she looked it up, and she arrives at the studio and the teacher, whoever that was, said, well, perhaps she'd be better off studying tap dance or jazz dance down the street. So it was a, a very clear brush off.
Ashlea: Was it normal for Black women to continually be turned away from pursuing ballet in the 1940s?
Kenneth: Yes. There were essentially no opportunities at all. The opportunities that began to arise for Black women in ballet are almost entirely a post-World War II phenomenon. So when we're talking about the 1940s, there were essentially none. Neither in Los Angeles nor in virtually anywhere else in the country.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, we start to see more opportunities, and then they increase in the 1970s and ‘80s. But as Misty Copeland has pointed out numerous times in her writings, even those opportunities were pretty slim.
Misty Copeland: I had moments of doubting myself and wanting to quit because I didn't know that there would be a future for an African American woman to make it to this level, um…
Kenneth: Many Black ballerinas, they'll point that out, that growing up they're often, and that's true today, that they're pointed towards, oh, well, why don't you do modern dance or jazz dance? Uh, wouldn't that be better than ballet? And that seems to be exactly what happened to Bernice Harrison's daughter.
Ashlea: Lucky for Bernice Harrison, she ran into a man who wanted to create an opportunity for Black girls, for them to learn classical ballet since they hadn't had an opportunity before, that man happened to be Joseph Rickard.
Kenneth: He was a choreographer. He was a dancer. And something must of, had to have stirred within him and said, you know, this just is not right. And so right there, Rickard said in his memoirs, which are today at the Huntington Library, uh, he wanted to create a school, where that young Black girl could dance. And that was in 1946.
Kenneth: Joseph was also a recent migrant from Michigan. And we know that his, uh, older sister Gretchen was learning ballet and he used to watch her dance. He learned about ballet, really at least introduction a little from her. And then he comes out to Hollywood. He wants to get into films, he wants to act. And when he comes across Nijinska’s Hollywood Ballet, this dance studio in Hollywood. He immediately takes up the opportunities that he can study with Najinska, the sister of the famed Polish Russian dancer, Nijinsky. So that's a formative period in his life. And during that time, he's a mailboy at the Paramount Studios. You know, he is trying to get some odd jobs to make ends meet. And so to be honest, financially he was in no position to start this studio. He had no major backer. If you look at virtually all ballet schools, at some point along the line, they have to have a major backer or backers, and he didn't have that.
Ashlea: And yet Rickard was determined to open a school for girls like Bernice’s daughter, which would later become the First Negro Classical Ballet.
He pulled some friends together, both at Paramount Studios and elsewhere, And through hook and by crook, just stringing things together, he managed to open this school in a abandoned ballroom at the corner of Jefferson and Normandie.
Ashlea: How Bernice Harrison went from enrolling her daughter in classes to becoming the first Black prima ballerina, that’s after the break.
Ashlea: OK, Kenneth. So Joseph meets Bernice and shortly after opens this new dance studio off a pure want to create opportunities for Black dancers. How exactly did he go about gathering other people and making this opportunity known to Black and brown people?
Kenneth: When he opened the school at the corner of Jefferson and Normandie, it was in a largely African American neighborhood. Um, his goal was to make that school available to as many Black children as possible who wanted to learn classical ballet. And that meant dancing en pointe or on point, on the toe. In the beginning he sent out handbills and put up posters. He put the posters up in schools and gymnasiums and record stores, uh, anywhere he could interest young people in trying to join ballet.
Kenneth: At some point, one of the two Black newspapers in Los Angeles, which is the Los Angeles Sentinel, took a real interest in this project. And also the newspaper had the trust of the Black community. So they started doing stories on this new venture that Joseph Rickard was trying out, and that all these dancers were coming to learn that it wasn't just children. It was people in their teens and twenties and perhaps even a little bit older, who were coming to learn as well. So it really grew organically. And so I suppose you could say it really started with Bernice Harrison's daughter, Angela, and then Bernice, looking at the lessons and so on, got more and more interested and she started dancing as well.
And then she goes on to become the lead dancer of the company.
Ashlea: What did it mean for Bernice to start dancing at this point in her life? I mean, like you mentioned, this was very technical, Russian ballet, and she started off with wanting to find classes for her daughter.
Kenneth: Well, we have no record that she was able to study ballet earlier on. I mean, she came from relatively poor circumstances. She grew up during the Great Depression and then she came out in the Second World War, or roughly thereabouts. It's hard to imagine she would've had any opportunities for ballet before. So, you know, I think it's fair to assume that this was really her big introduction to ballet, I believe, according to her son, Nareshima, she was born around 1917. So that would make her about 30 years old, roughly, when she started. That was just unheard of in the ballet world. I mean if you want to learn ballet, you really need to start, you know, when you're 6 or 7n. Some of them, girls start even earlier.
Mothers with three children and also working part-time, and working as a homemaker just didn't become ballet dancers. But it's clear when you get to know Bernie Harrison, she just had this iron will. She not only wanted her daughter to learn ballet, but she wanted to learn ballet as well, and she wanted to go out on the stage and perform in one of the most demanding dance forms that we know of.
So she spent hours and hours, countless hours in her, her spare time in, in weekends, in the evenings, going to the school and working at the barre. The pole, the barre that you had to hold and to dance onto in the studio and working with Rickard to learn the various moves, right?
They all have French names. The Arabesque, the Demi-plié, and all that. And that just takes a staggering amount of dedication and disappointment. I mean, she, um, must have had to encounter that she's starting really quite late for ballet and putting a lot of pressure on the body.
Ashlea: Yeah, you mentioned Nareshima Osei, which is one of Bernice's children, and I actually had a chance to talk to him as well. He kind of shared with me what he remembers with growing up with his mom and you know, watching her dance and the dynamic of how that impacted their household. And he was still fairly young, so he doesn't remember too much, but he definitely remembers, you know, watching his mom practice.
Nareshima Osei: She practiced really all the time. We had moved to that house 2812 South Hobart, wood frame house. And it was only a two bedroom, but there was a parlor. This is where parlors were built in those days. The parlor was right in the front to the east, to the left. And my dad and them created that as a bedroom and it had a lot of room into it. So I know she would, you know, practice her pliés and on her toes, you know, and she would do that, I guess as much as two little dumb, uh, 5- and 4-year-old boys would allow her to do it, you know?
Ashlea: It just feels like she was born to do this, especially for her to be able to rise and be a star at such a late age learning such a technical form of dancing. How did Bernice end up in the spotlight? Are there any notable performances that come to mind?
Kenneth: Yeah. She frequently danced with, uh, there was Graham Johnson. Um, and he started with the school probably roughly around the same time she did. And they quickly became dance partners. And he was the male lead, she was the female lead. And so they appeared in a lot of productions together. One of them was a little China figure in which Graham Johnson is this statue, and then these two maids who are going around the room, cleaning up, dust him. And he becomes this passionate lover. So it's a dance that is created and choreographed by the company, by the First Negro Classic Ballet.
And so that was a favorite one for critics and apparently for audiences as well. They danced in Cinderella together, which was also the choreography that they used was the one that Rick created. They danced in, in one that Graham Johnson choreographed, later on called Raisin’ Cane, which takes place, in the South, in the sugar cane farm.
And the various trials and tribulations of a figure who's part of that. Another one called Southern Landscape, which depicts a mother who is mourning the death of her son who was lynched in the South. and so when we picture Bernice in these dances, the critics just seem to be united, she's just doing this amazing job. And they danced very well together. And she appeared in most of their productions during almost the entire, 11-year period of the First Negro Classic Ballet.
Ashlea: So if you could name any, what would you say were some of the successes of the First Negro Classical Ballet? Like, what were its peak moments of success?
Kenneth: I would say that Philharmonic Auditorium performance, their first one, they performed four times at the Philharmonic Auditorium, their first one 1949.
In my view, that was the highlight in a way because they played to a packed house, major theater, huge response. I would point to the Libero Theater in Santa Barbara, that performance. They were very young and starting out, it was also around the same time.
I would also point to the Redlands Bowl, uh, 1951. They're playing pretty deep in the valley and the Inland Empire and they're just wowing the crowd and getting a huge response. It was a big success. And the venue is unusual, right? A bowl, right, an outdoor bowl rather than indoors.
So I think all these shows that they can perform in a variety of different venues to a variety of different audiences and still show that they're a great dance company.
Ashlea: Coming up: the fate of Bernice and the First Negro Classical Ballet.
Ashlea: All right, Kenneth. I actually wanted to circle back around to Joseph and this effort he made with creating this troupe. I know that others had tried and failed to do the same before. There had been other attempts by others, like well-known dancer of the ‘40s, Agnes de Mille, to create an all-black troupe, but that had no success.
Kenneth: Yeah, that's right. My understanding is a big challenge is both benefactors and audiences. And so how do you get the money and then how do you get people to come to attend? And that's true for virtually any classical arts performance. And so that's part of the challenge of the few examples that we know of in which there were efforts to create African American dance companies in the country.
They regularly came face-to-face with these two issues, trying to get major benefactors and trying to get audiences. So there were at least two companies that, that formed on the East coast. One was the Ballet Negré or Negro Ballet, uh, by Catherine Dunham. And Catherine Dunham, uh, is really one of these iconic figures who is incorporating all kinds of different influences in her dance movement, a lot of Afro-Caribbean influences.She was an anthropologist as well as a dancer and choreographer. So she was bringing these influences into dance in addition to ballet.
Ashlea: Yeah, Katherin Dunham actually got quite some attention for her efforts. In 1952 her performances were broadcasted to U.K. audiences, one of the few times people halfway across the world heard and saw recordings like this.
Katherine Dunham clip: The rhythm of West Indies Creole music is heard in England for the first time since 1948, as the Katherine Dunham Company of Dancers stages a Negro ballet
Kenneth: But that group folded in, within a year ‘cause during the Depression, had a hard time getting funding.
The other is the American Negro Ballet, they offered ballet courses and some of the dancers took ballet courses, but they don't seem to have been a strictly classical ballet company. And again, uh, it's the Great Depression. There's no money for the classical arts in general. And it folds.
So when Rickard comes along and launches this company, with virtually no funds, the only way you can imagine that is if most of the people are either offering the services pro bono or they're getting paid a pittance.
We know that Nancy Cappola, the costume designer, was doing it largely unpaid. And one of the set designers who came from Paramount was just doing this pro bono, so he wasn't getting paid. They surely must have had some box office, but, it's not clear how that money was delved out. I'm sure the dancers did not make much money from these performances. I see nothing about Bernice. She never says, I wish I’m making more out of this. It’s, what can we do that’s creative and productive and interesting or different?
Ashlea: You mentioned before that there were Californians coming to support and to see these performances live. You had playwrights and critics continually raving on about the performances. I'm just wondering, why was there not more support financially?
Kenneth: Here, I'm just guessing but Joseph Rickard, when I look at him, he's not one who really is seeking the limelight, right? He's not a Merce Cunningham or a Martha Graham or an Agnes de Mille or Katherine Dunham, whatever. He's really putting the dancers in the front, and he's often in the background.
So I think he was a little bit reluctant to try to go out and really sell the company and stay true to their ethical stance. They're trying to avoid stereotypes altogether and the racial tropes that were so common at the time. And he was not really into publicizing himself.
And so I think the few times he was able to hire some good managers, they did all that for him. But the fact that he wasn't very good at that, I think, meant that, he couldn't get the big money to come in. And there are a lot of wealthy people, Black and white, in Los Angeles at the time. A lot of Hollywood folks who made money and Central Avenue was still, which was the heart of the Black community up through the end of the 1950s, had a number of very successful businesses, banks, insurance companies, any one of them could have provided funds. It didn't take that much to support this ballet company.
Ashlea: So the First Negro Classical Ballet, it lasted for 10 years. It lasted until about 1959. Why did it end?
Kenneth: It folded because most of the major dancers had, had left. A number of the dancers from the First Negro Classic Ballet joined the New York Negro Ballet because there was a big benefactor and it was one, but they had one, and I can only imagine that they thought “at last, you know, we might actually get more exposure and actually get paid a bit more for what we're doing.”
Ashlea: Such a shame that the majority of the First Negro Ballet left, but understandable if they did for the chance to be better compensated for their art… so who actually left and what was the result of such an exodus?
Kenneth: Graham Johnson and Bernice Harrison, the two lead dancers, left, Claudius Wilson and Rickard left. They all went to this New York Negro Ballet, which was just opening up around that time. That benefactor was gonna support the troupe and support a tour to Europe and then they would have performances in New York. And so it sounds like things started off awfully well, a lot of enthusiasm for the idea. But the benefactor just died, uh, that was the end of it.
Kenneth: You know, this is I think the really sad part of the story because here she was the leading Black ballerina of Los Angeles and arguably of the entire country, right? Of a long lasting African American ballet company. There were in the 1950s, increasingly, African American ballerinas, Janet Collins and Raven Wilkinson and quite a few others who were coming up in the 1950s.
So by the time the First Negro Classic Ballet ends, Bernice she is no longer, the first, or the main, um, Black ballerina in the country. But she did have a decade's worth of being a prima ballerina of a long-lasting ballet company. She had that behind her. So that is something that most other Black women at the time did not have, who wanted to dance in ballet. So this was a real, I think, selling point. So she joins the New York Negro Ballet, which had just recently been founded, in New York. And this is a, it's a disaster. I don't know exactl, what happened. We don't have much of a record. It just seems that for a variety of reasons, she just wasn't happy with the company and probably she wasn’t chosen as one of the lead ballerinas, or at least she was maybe more sidelined than she'd been in the First Negro Classic Ballet. It's not clear what happened. Her mother also took ill in Los Angeles, and that may have been a reason that she didn't join the group on their first tour to Europe. And so she went back to Los Angeles and by that time, the First Negro Classic Ballet had folded. And she was also in declining health.
Kenneth: This is one of the hardest things about Bernice's story is that she developed diabetes, and so her health is in decline. The opportunities are scarcely there, and so no, she doesn't get the opportunity really to dance anywhere else. I think the New York Negro Ballet, that was really her last big chance. I think realistically the family at home, three kids and ailing mother, she just didn't have a lot of options. And all of that must have hit her pretty hard. And so to my knowledge, she hardly danced at all when she returned to L.A.
Ashlea: Lastly, Kenneth. I wanted to know why is it important to acknowledge Bernice's story now?
Kenneth: Well, I think it's long overdue. She did some extraordinary things and then for a long time was forgotten.
Angela, her daughter, she, and now I understand, has Parkinson's or some form of dementia. So, uh, tragically, I can't speak to her and that's a real loss. The other brother is also died, Nareshima and his memories are really what we have.
Ashlea: Yeah, those memories are the very ones her son Nareshima is trying to keep alive and pass on to his family and the world.
Nareshima Osei: Just in terms of really appreciating it, I, I don't think I really grasped it until she was gone and so she was the dancer, she was Mama, she made things happen. She was dedicated to doing this thing and doing it right. My nieces are all, you know, have pictures of her and all and I'm getting the original from New York to them so that their families can understand that their grandmother and their great-grandmother, you know, was somebody who should be appreciated.
Kenneth: I'd say at a time when there was still unquestioned racism, Jim Crow restrictions, redlining and so on. You have all that part of the history of Los Angeles. I think she really was trying to light a candle, trying to, and other members of the troupe as well, to try to step aside from that and say, can we create something that no one else really has done? And I think it's that tenacity for that dream of classical dance, and the sheer joy and enthusiasm being part of this art form, and willingness to put up with so much and still.
I don't make the dance so beautiful, so creative, so engaging.
I think at any time that's an interesting person to learn about, to find out about. And Bernie's Harrison, I think, symbolized that.
Ashlea: Kenneth, thank you so much for this conversation.
Kenneth: My pleasure. Glad to be part of it.
Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of The Times Essential News From the L.A. Times. Ashlea Brown was a jefa on this episode and the host that was edited by Heba Elorbany and Mike Heflin mixed and mastered it. Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our fellow is Helen Li. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Monday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias