“Tell the true stories,” sincere words spoken by the eloquently graceful ballerina and instructor Delores Browne. Delores was a trailblazing ballet dancer known for her phenomenal grace, discipline, and determination. Her ballet technique and artistry made her a symbol of resilience and excellence in the field during a period when black ballet dancers were often secluded from training and performing with mainstream ballet companies. She broke many barriers in integrated ballet settings, standing firm against prejudice to ensure she and her peers received fair treatment during training and performances.
Delores Browne was born on March 30, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents Sam and Harriet were very young when they wed. She was raised in South Philadelphia. Although segregation was the law of the land at the time, Philadelphia was a city where racial politics and divisions were not uniformly instituted. People of both races lived where they could afford to, and at times that meant ethnicities lived side-by-side.
By her own account, “the neighborhood I grew up in was a very racially-mixed, economically low income, working class people. We didn’t particularly mix in socially, but we did in school and in movies and in church. All of my schooling was totally mixed. I never went to just a single-race school. Things changed in Philadelphia after the war when people started moving away and that’s when neighborhoods became more segregated.”
As a youth, Delores initially found her outlet at a ballet club run by a public school teacher, Miss Weir. Miss Weir created this ballet club and twice a year they had a performance. In her first Spring Concert, Delores was cast as Cinderella. It was at that performance of Cinderella that Marion Cuyjet, founder of the Judimar School of Dance, scouted young Delores.
In 1949, at age 14, Delores was awarded a scholarship by Marion Cuyjet, and began her professional training at Judimar. Years later, Delores auditioned for the School of American Ballet and became one of six Black students in the school. In 1953, Judimar sponsored her enrollment to the School of American Ballet after she sailed through the audition.
After a year, she returned back home and danced with the short-lived Ballet Guild of Philadelphia. In the 1950s era, it was common that Black ballet dancers rarely performed with white companies. At Ballet Guild, Delores worked with Antony Tudor, performing a featured role in his 1954 ballet Offenbach in the Underworld. Her dream was to eventually join the ranks of the New York City Ballet. But after a year she left the school, exhausted from the strain of working to support her craft.
In 1956, Delores was invited to join the New York Negro Ballet. The name was a result of the presenter’s desire to make certain that audiences knew what they were coming to see. The company was billed as “America’s Most Novel and Exotic Company.”
The company successfully toured England and Scotland for several months in 1957. They traveled to New Castle, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, and Cardiff. They spent six days in each city, performing twice a day, with matinees on Wednesdays. Within the tour’s seven-ballet repertoire, Delores performed five principal roles. Unfortunately, Lucy Thorndike, the patroness who had funded most of the company’s expenses, died, and the company eventually closed in 1960.
On March 30, 1958, Delores danced with fellow Judimar alumni John Jones and Charles Moore in a 1958 Alvin Ailey/Ernest Parham recital. Ernie Parham was also a student at the Judimar School, concurrently with Browne, Jones, and Moore. In 1960, Delores appeared in the same Ailey performance in which included the premiere of Revelations.
In the early 1960s, she auditioned for ballet companies in New York, but was never hired. She stopped dancing for several years, until Joffrey Ballet dancer John Jones asked her to perform in a concert evening with him in 1966. New York Times dance critic Clive Barnes wrote that the two danced “radiantly.” The performance reignited her career. “I never came out of dance again,” Delores exclaimed.
As a philanthropist, she supported Ailey and Philadanco, among other companies, and the International Association of Blacks in Dance’s annual Black ballet dancer auditions. She shared her knowledge, experiences, and financial support so that young dancers could have the opportunities she did not have in the 1950s and ’60s.
In 1981, she resigned from Ailey, but she continued to teach classes there until 1986. Her contemporary Native American art business, October Art, which lasted from 1984–1994, was taking much of her time, along with teaching at Philadanco.
Delore’s career was a testament to overcoming adversity, and her contributions continue to inspire discussions about diversity in ballet. For more details about her life and impact, visit resources like MoBBallet.org and Black Dance Magazine
Delores Browne, transitioned on October 2, 2023.
Quotes:
“So, my experience before I came to New York was always live music. I never danced in a class with a record player.”
“We were in a partnering class…and it was filled with men. But not black men; there were no black men in the class.”
“Tell the true stories.”
“I still fall back on my Judimar training. It was the strongest foundation for me.”
“When I first went to the School of American Ballet I was one of the few people trained outside of New York that had a good background in ballet terminology.”
“We were taught all kinds of things you can’t imagine nowadays. We had a culture coach in elementary school who taught us how to walk up to a chair, how to sit down, how to go through a door, how to enter a room.”
“We all had a book written by Lincoln Kirstein and Muriel Stuart called, “Classical Ballet.” It’s a rectangular book and it has wonderful drawings, and how to pronounce the French terms. You’ll see how torn up that book is because I’ve read it and re-read it, and over and over again. I never would have thought that I would have had Muriel Stuart years later as a teacher.”
Sources:
www.pointemagazine.com/remembering-pioneering-ballerina-delores-browne/#gsc.tab=0
Credits:
Recreate Model: Princess Howard-Johnson
Photographer & Editor of Recreate Photo: Jasmine Mallory
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