Dance Theatre of Harlem

[Katharine Kanter]

Permettez-nous d'attirer à votre attention la crise financière que traverse Dance Theatre of Harlem en ce moment. Ci-dessous, des extraits d'un long article daté d'hier, par T. Tobias (http://www.artsjournal.com/tobias/).

Cela pose plusieurs questions, entre autres, la chance que nous avons ici en Europe DE NE PAS DEPENDRE D'INTERETS PRIVES.

Et pourquoi dans un pays où en théorie, la ségrégation raciale fut abolie en 1965 (un siècle après Lincoln !), il faille encore avoir une troupe entièrement SEPAREE afin de permettre à des personnes de couleur de danser à un niveau professionnel.

Quoique, à voir l'éclatante blancheur (WHITER THAN WHITE) de nos scènes ici ....

Voici les extraits en question:

“While the extraordinary DTH school continues to function, the 35-year-old company, 44 dancers strong, is now operating with only a skeleton staff, there being no money on hand to pay salaries, while the board of directors has been swiftly bailing out. DTH will fulfill its upcoming engagement at Kennedy Center, June 8-13, but its future is uncertain unless sufficient funding is found to meet a $2.5 million deficit and cover the costs of ongoing production.

“(...°) Mitchell, the NYCB’s first African-American principal dancer, conceived DTH to correct the virulent concept that blacks can’t do classical dancing, curtailed his own performing career to bring the company (and the school necessary to it) into being, and miraculously held these enterprises together for three and a half decades, leading the troupe to successive moments of glory and repeatedly getting it to rebound from near-death situations endemic to arts institutions. You call that inept management? I call it heroic achievement (...°)

“Apparently, the company is now in the process of hiring an executive director, who will take care of practical matters while Mitchell, who has agreed to the arrangement, concentrates on the artistic side of the company’s affairs. This solution, simple and logical as it is in theory, may be difficult to carry out in practice (...° ) First, it assumes, wrongly, that there is no overlap between administrative decisions and artistic decisions. When it comes to repertory, then, will Mitchell be allowed to select or commission dances solely on their aesthetic merit? Or will he, like every other ballet director functioning today, have to give equal or greater weight in his decisions to what sells?

(...) I hope he will have the courage and fortitude for this latest challenge, as he has had for so many previous ones, because his mission—making black performers an integral part of the classical-dance world—has not yet been fully accomplished."