The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby. Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History

These are the women who changed the way the world thinks about ballet and ballerinas, the women who normalized women of color in the ballet. The women who wanted to pursue their passion and art in a world that wanted to prevent them. It was revolutionary and it was challenging. They traveled all over the world to dance. They worked hard. They made many sacrifices. They broke through artistic, gender and racial barriers.

Then they were forgotten, lost to history, erased. Until they decided to unerase themselves. They created the 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy Council, whose mission is To give voice to former members of Dance Theatre of Harlem while actively providing education, inspiration, and empowerment to aspiring dancers of color.  To capture, preserve and share the rich history of those who were essential in the creation and building of a world-renown Black Professional Ballet Company. (https://152ndstblackballetlegacy.org/new-page-2)

That valiant journey is told with great detail, care and skill in The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History. Valby is the primary author but the five ballerinas are also credited and acknowledged as collaborators and contributors. They are Lydia Abarca, Gayle Mckinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells and Karlya Shelton-Benjamin.

The women were gifted the opportunity to break out in ballet by the fledgling beginnings of Arthur Mitchell’s (1934-2018) Dance Theatre of Harlem. A project that was big and brave and inspired and succeeded in ways that touched the lives of innumerable people. Dance Theatre of Harlem continues to inspire and entertain in its 57th year. https://www.dancetheatreofharlem.org/our-history/

“For over fifty years, Dance Theatre of Harlem has been a home for those who’d been made to feel wrong in their muscles and curves. Who’d been told their feet were too genetically flat for a proper relevé. Who’d been denied auditions or pushed into modern classes because their teachers couldn’t imagine them in the historically white roles of classic ballets. Who’d been told there was no room for a Black swan in a corps de ballet because her color would break the line”(17).

It was not unique for people of color to want to dance ballet or even have the immense talent to do so and to be stars. It was that they were not allowed and not welcome. Creating a space for that talent and passion to thrive and be delivered is the magic of what Arthur Mitchell and the Dance Theatre of Harlem provided. He fought hard, and so did the founding ballerinas who knew they had to be better, meaning extra good, because the eyes on them would be extra critical.

The 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy Council

“At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, divorced from the normal rhythms and routines of their lives, five founding and first-generation Dance Theatre of Harlem ballerinas formed the 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy Council, named for the street they helped make famous. Lydia Abarca-Mitchell (no relation to Arthur), Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells, and Karlya Shelton-Benjamin had held each other up half a century earlier, and they would do so again through the dysregulating trudge of Covid. They had all been knocked off balance by the anointing of Misty Copeland, by what felt like a deliberate scrubbing of their groundbreaking history. They would make peace with quarantine by gathering online every Tuesday afternoon, to throw out an anchor to one another from their scattered perches across the country. They would take advantage of this unexpected time to right a grievous wrong—they would take control of their own history”(14).

On June 30, 2015, Misty Copeland became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer in ABT’s 75-year history and was inaccurately hailed as the first Black prima ballerina. And as an exception, a one and only Black ballerina. Copeland herself admits even she didn’t realize the extent of the erasure of the Black swans and the others who preceded her. The legacy council aims to correct this.

The Swans of Harlem tells the story of the five swans and so much more. They came from a diverse range of experiences but they all fell in love with ballet very early on in their lives. Valby follows them through their time at DTH and their lives after they left the company. Stories of other founding and prominent members of DTH, the history of ballet, Harlem and civil rights are covered as well.

Valby states: “I’m a white woman with two Black daughters who are dancers themselves. It is because of those founding Dance Theatre of Harlem ballerinas that today my girls and other young women of color can buy shoes and tights that match their skin tones. I think the Legacy Council’s investment in my girls is part of the reason the women have allowed me so completely into their lives to tell their fuller story”(19).

The book starts out with the story of ballet dancer Arthur Michell who became the first Black dancer in the New York City Ballet amid so many obstacles. He rose to become a respected director of various ballet companies as well as an inventive choreographer.

Of Arthur Mitchell, Valby writes:

“He wasn’t a black man who dared to dance ballet. He was a dancer who dared ballet to see and celebrate Blackness”(54).

Dance Theatre of Harlem

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Mitchell decided to return to Harlem where he grew up and give back at the local level. He and Karel Shook founded Dance Theatre of Harlem. The company offered Black ballerinas and black male ballet dancers a chance to thrive and succeed in a field that had previously shut them out.

“By 1970, word had spread through New York City of Arthur Mitchell’s mission to make ballet more inclusive. Over one thousand children, some of them white, had enrolled in the Dance Theatre of Harlem school. When reporters asked Mitchell about his intentions to integrate the company, he balked at the idea. “I don’t want an all-Black company, but until other companies start to employ them, why should I take a white dancer and put a Black one out of work?” Of the major dance companies in New York at the time, American Ballet Theatre had yet to welcome a Black dancer to its ranks, City Ballet had one, and Joffrey Ballet had two”(84).

It is inspirational and exciting to be on this journey with these incredible humans and artists, fighting for their art, for their passion. Fighting to dance. And dance ballet. So many were pushed toward another genre but they wanted to dance ballet and they persisted in that dream.

Mitchell was hard on them. Demanding and exacting. They bonded in that difficulty, but they also loved him deeply for what he gave them, his vision, and what he achieved.

“Every dancer that followed Arthur Mitchell to Harlem entered his studio with the same sense of urgency. The man who had broken all the rules by rising to the top of the ballet world thought he could do the same for them. After being hailed as the first at City Ballet back in 1955, nobody had come up behind him since, and he hated the idea of being held up as some outlier to his race.

“As a grownup, I’ve met people who’d never before spoken to a Negro,” he told a reporter in 1968. “You,’ they say, ‘are an exception.’ No, I’m not. They haven’t learned that people are individuals, no matter what color. But I do believe that arts, especially the dance, where you don’t have to verbalize, can and will cut though the barriers. My only thought is and has always been: Let’s train the kids to dance. Someone’s got to be prepared when the doors open, if they open and they’d better open”(52).

The Swans of Harlem

Lydia Abarca the first prima ballerina of Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Abarca grew up in Harlem, the eldest daughter of eight children. A prodigy in dancing, she received a full scholarship to a Saturday dance class at Juilliard, and another scholarship in her high school years at Harkness Ballet’s professional dance training, but was never allowed to perform on a stage. The major inspiration for her dreams  came when she saw the movie, West Side Story and knew she absolutely wanted to be a professional ballet dancer. Disillusioned, at age 15 she was ready to quit until she heard about Arthur Mitchell’s new school.

She was favored by Mitchell but she was also good. Really good. The reviews were stunning. Mitchell’s favoritism and her prima status created a wedge between her and the other ballerinas, but not a lasting one. He needed her to be the face of Dance Theatre of Harlem. He worked her hard. As the prima ballerina and one of the first women of color to hold that title, there was an enormous amount of pressure on Abarca but her natural elegance, style, innate talent helped her hold that role with grace. She made it onto the cover of Dance Magazine in 1975.

Gayle McKinney-Griffith

McKinney-Griffith was born in Harlem and moved with her family to Connecticut when she was five. There her parents enrolled her in dance classes with Maximillian and Olga Froman of the Bolshoi. Her talent was evident. A scholarship to the American Dance Festival enabled her to take classes with Martha Graham. Later accepted into Juilliard, she was forced out of the ballet program. When she heard about Dance Theatre of Harlem she immediately went to audition.

Mckinney-Griffith quickly rose to the top tier and was later tapped by Mitchell to help  run the theatre as rehearsal director. She was not only a talented top-tier ballerina in the troupe but also served as leader and support person for many of the dancers.

Sheila Rohan

Sheila Rohan was born and lived on Staten Island in the West Indian enclave her parents had immigrated to from Saint Martin. She was the youngest of eight daughters. Her father died young, leaving the mother to raise the eight girls alone.

After a long childhood illness, Rohan was prescribed exercise to strengthen her legs. Her elder sister enrolled her in a ballet class where her talent was readily detected. She continued to study until an early and unexpected pregnancy. She settled down into an intentional community and let her dance take on a community arts theme at a time when Black arts and revolution were intersecting.

By the time she heard of Arthur Mitchell through her sister, she was 27 and married with three children. But it was too good to resist. She went and auditioned and became one of the principal ballerinas. For the first few years she did not let anyone else in the company know that she had children, until it became too hard to hide.

Marcia Sells

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sells attended ballet classes from age four. She had never seen a Black ballerina perform until DTH came to town when she was ten years old. Her mother was a teacher and an activist. Sells was well educated. She knew her Black history and had her role models in W. E. B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells. But until she saw DTH:

“I’ve been the only Black girl in my Ballet school of my entire childhood up until then,” says Sells. “And now here comes Arthur Mitchell. A Black ballet company on the university main stage in my hometown. Lydia and Gayle and Sheila! Suddenly nobody will ever be able to tell me it’s not possible from me too. Even if my ballet school doesn’t imagine that for me, I can point to that stage and say, ’right there—see! Those women, right there, already having an impact, even as they’re just starting the company.” It’s a night she credits with changing the course of her life. “Because I don’t think I would’ve gone forward if I hadn’t seen Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1970”(88).

Sells joined DTH at age 16, one of the youngest members to join.

An innovation that changed ballet forever

Among the multitude of innovations and glass ceilings broken at DTH, one of the most revolutionary was the development of six separate dyes of various skin colors for the dancers’ tights. For the longest time, the dancers wore pink tights as did all classical ballerinas. But it always seemed somehow wrong and broke the line of the dancers’ bodies which is absolutely anathema to ballet. With Mitchell’s permission, Llanchie Stevenson (dancer) and Zelda Wynn (wardrobe Mistress) created their own dyes to match the variety of skin tones that didn’t break the line of the dancers.

Karlya Shelton

Daughter of a debutante mother and a community-oriented, Navy Veteran and post office worker for a father, Shelton had an idyllic childhood in Denver, Colorado. She entered into the dual passions of music and dance early on. At age 16 she focused on ballet and began to be noticed and allowed to perform, but not the lead roles. Her teenage years brought her more forcefully into experiences of overt  and covert racism. On a trip to New York City she auditioned for DTH. She had seen the article about them with Abarca on the cover and it set her on fire. Though she was awarded scholarships at two other dance academies, she chose to join DTH.

She recalls her audition for DTH:

“While kneeling in the wings to lace up the pale ribbons of her shoes, Shelton noticed Gayle McKinney-Griffith and Sheila Rohan sitting on the steps applying brown makeup to theirs. As her eyes traveled up from their feet, she took in how the brown of their tights matched the hues of their skin. In all her years, she’d never considered that she might have a right to bend the art form to meet her as these women were. “For so long I’d looked at myself in pictures knowing something’s broken,” she says. “The line is not right. ‘Is that my leg? Because it’s not the same color as my arm.’ I  didn’t do anything because nothing was ever offered as a solution.”

Oh, this is where I belong, Shelton said to herself”(160).

The story of the Swans of Harlem and the founding of Dance Theatre of Harlem is so powerful, but almost more powerful is the story of their coming back together to unerase themselves and the work they are currently doing to tell their stories and to be role models for current dancers.

Karen Valby is a Nasty Woman Writer and the Swans of Harlem: Lydia Abarca,  Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells and Karlya Shelton-Benjamin are Nasty Women Artists

© Theresa C. Dintino 2026

Featured image:

Karlya Shelton, front and center, with the swans, performing George Balanchine’s choreography for a Tchaikovsky serenade in 1979. © Jack Vartoogian / Front Row Photos

Works cited

Valby, Karen. The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History. Pantheon Books, 2024