From Ballet to Broadway and Black and Coleman Hill
Coleman Hill danced in the American Negro Ballet since the company’s debut in 1937. He performed in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1939 with Von Grona’s Swing Ballet. This was his only Broadway performance.
The American Negro Ballet did not stay open long as a company, which led those dancers, like Coleman Hill, to search for other opportunities to dance. This included opportunities on Broadway like Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1939.
Sources:
Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1939, Playbill
Coleman Hill Performer’s Page, Playbill
American Negro Ballet Company, Wikipedia
More about Coleman Hill
Coleman Hill was a member of the American Negro Ballet. Hill, along with the rest of the company, performed in the company’s debut in 1937 and with the New York Negro Symphony Orchestra in 1939. His fellow company members included Lavinia Williams, Alfred Bledger, and Edith Ross.
Sources:
More about Von Grona’s Swing Ballet
Eugene Von Grona trained in dance in Germany and arrived in New York City in 1928. He formed the American Negro Ballet in 1934 after seeing the zeal of the artists working in Harlem, noting the new type of dance energy he saw in them that was lacking in European dancers. He thought that the dancers he found for his company “didn’t have the opportunity” for technique classes and so he gave it to them at the American Negro Ballet. ANB was the first professional company to feature concert dance with Black members on a scale that garnered acceptance from the media as well as criticism.
They used the term “ballet” to describe all the dance they were doing, though not a classical ballet company. In 1939, members of the company performed alongside the New York Negro Symphony Orchestra; these members were Valerie Cavell, Marion Brown, Beryl Clarke, Viola Gibson, Dorothy Jones, Harriet Oliver, Evelyn Pilcher, Edith Ross, Pearl Spears, Hazel Spence, Ettie Stephens, Willard Taylor, Elizabeth Thompson, Lavinia Williams, Wahneta Talley, Teddy Allen, Alfred Bledger, Jon Edward, Anthony Fleming, Frank Green, Coleman Hill, James Smith, and Harry Young.
Sources:
“Which was the first?” A historical essay on the first Black Dance Company in the USA
Nicole Toney
