There is a reason why Joan Myers Brown is affectionately referred to as “Aunt Joan.” She feels like home. To be specific, a black home. She embodies that beautiful complexity, the dichotomy of the feeling of curling into the safety of a warm embrace, and the disciplined requirement of standing up straight concomitantly. Anyone (adult or child) who encounters Aunt Joan is fully aware that she can soothe just as quickly as she can swat. She will praise you, “I am so proud of you, I knew you could do it,” and in the next breath, “Go wash your armpits, you stink.” She does not mince words in compassion or criticism. Her authenticity and candor, while intimidating at times, are just two of the characteristics that have made her an invaluable matriarch of the community, and a treasure to the the city of Philadelphia.

 

Before America adopted the slogan “No child left behind,” Joan Myers Brown was living it. Her Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, a staple in the city’s art community for almost 60 years, has been, and continues to be the nucleus for families of color. You come in for a dance class and leave with a family. If it takes a village to raise a child, then the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts is the town square. Art, education, history, and hygiene are at the root of the school and world-renown Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco). Enter any lavatory and you will find an assortment of soaps and deodorants, kind of like home. To walk the halls of the building is to traverse a timeline in history. It is possible to chart a whole person’s life in photographs, some faded from time, others vibrant still vibrating with energy.

 

To understand Aunt Joan— her connections to art, community and education— we must travel to the beginnings of the strikingly beautiful octogenarians timeline to learn about some of the people and things that influenced and molded Brown, primarily her parents and her dance instructor, Sydney King.

 

Joan Myers Brown was born in 1931 to Nellie Lewis, a nuclear scientist, and Julius Myers, a chef and restaurateur. Their only child was delivered to them on Christmas Day. She grew up in the Gray’s Ferry section of West Philadelphia that was racially mixed; however with white flight, it slowly became an all black working class neighborhood. Her mother was a studious loner who benefited from the opportunities that war can afford marginalized people. She was able to finally put her chemistry degree to proper use as a researcher and chemical engineer at a lab during World War II. When Mr. Myers was not running his own restaurant, he was working at some of the finest establishments in the city. Her home was filled with an appreciation for education and good food. Joan remembers:

 

My mother was strict, but I think it was the era where parents were strict. You played outside until it got dark and then you came in. You didn’t run the street after school, you did your homework and you played outside and you came in. Both my parents were working, so I was on my own until they got home from work. But I knew that I better not leave that porch. There were rules that no longer exist in our communities.

 

This sense of structure, discipline, and a learned skill of self-governing are the tenets every student or professional dancer coming through Brown’s organization begins to embody. Not only do her students know how to dance, but they know how to carry themselves through the world with decorum, pride, and self-worth. Aunt Joan carries the lessons of her parents and teachers with her and has planted them in students, parents, teachers, company members and choreographers. Brown’s reach is impossible to chart fully. The metaphorical vines of her teachings have crept around the globe.

 

One of the greatest imprints Aunt Joan carries with her is the keloid of the racial inequity she has witnessed and endured. When it comes to race, Aunt Joan is just as direct and forthright as she is about bad technique. Like most African Americans, it is impossible to discuss the triumphs and failures of one’s life without taking into account issues of color and class, as well as the access that being on the right side of color and class afford especially if you were born in a certain era. To be black in America in the 1930s meant being a second class citizen, enduring segregation and other offenses against your humanity. However, the deepest wounds are often incidents of friendly fire, produced by internal racism and classism that set people apart. At the time in Philadelphia, there was a clear internal divide between Black professionals (Doctors, lawyers, business owners) and the working middle and lower class. There were social clubs, like Jack and Jill, whose criteria for entry were based on both economic status and color. While whites were Brown Bag testing blacks(those with skin the shade of a brown bag or lighter were more accepted, and granted access and opportunity than their darker skinned peers), blacks were Brown Bagging their own. When you did not pass the test, there were areas of society were not accessible to you.

 

My father was a chef, so he had a trade. We were not well off, but better off. I wasn’t included in the society. [It wasn’t ] Until I went to dancing school, did I really realize that. That there was a separation.

 

Racial politics (both external and internal) created a wound that has not, and will not heal and have been a catalyst for the legacy Aunt Joan has built. So much of her work is about creating opportunities, opening doors, and carving pathways in some of the spaces that she was not able to enter in hopes that they could be broken open for the next generations. Indefatigable in her quest, she has diagnosed herself with what she refers to as “founder’s” disease.

 

I look around, I see things that need to happen. I needed to have a company because there were no opportunities in the city for black youngsters to study. I started IABD (the International association of Blacks in Dance) for the same reason — because of lack of an opportunity for companies like my company for funding, for being presented, for touring.

 

During the 1940’s when Jim Crow was the law of the land, Philadelphia was somewhat anomalous. There were areas of the city where white and black lived in the same neighborhoods, and children of all races went to school together. Likewise, there were public spaces that were clearly divided, and private business owners could choose to enact segregation or not. It was a time filled with an odd blurring of the rules, and dance was one area where some were actively blurring the color lines. To understand this fully, we must take into consideration the artistic landscape of the city.

 

Arts were as prevalent in the city of Philadelphia in the early part of the 20th century as they are presently and have always undergirded the city and its flow. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, ballet was popularized in the city with the help of a man named George Washington Smith who was Mulatto. Smith was a stonecutter by trade and found dance as an adult, training with James Sylvain and Jean Coralli as well as with Paul Hazard.  He performed with American ballerinas Mary Ann Lee, Julia Turnbull, and Lola Montez. He gained respect and notoriety when the great Austrian ballerina Fanny Elssler invited him to be her partner. On January 1, 1846 in Boston, Smith and Mary Ann Lee performed the American premiere of Giselle. He began to choreograph P.T Barnum’s Roman Hippodrome. After the rebuilding of the Continental Theatre, he staged ballets for mixed bill program. In 1881 Smith opened a ballet school on the corner of Broad and Columbia.

 

In addition to dance, the other arts in Philadelphia were thriving. The Philadelphia Art Museum was chartered in 1876, boasting a remarkable collection of antique furniture, enamels, carved ivory, jewelry, metalwork, glass, ceramics, books, textiles and paintings. The Settlement Music School was founded in 1908 with the intention of provided musical training to young immigrants in an effort to Americanize the foreign population of Philadelphia. The arts training and exposure in the City of Brotherly Love is unparalleled, hence the ubiquity of excellent arts educators.

 

Arts were a part of Philadelphia’s daily culture and played an important role in the public school system as well. Schools sponsored extracurricular after-school clubs that taught music, opera, fine arts and dance, ballet specifically. Artists often had “straight” jobs in the school system and were encouraged to start clubs, not only to enrich students but to feed their own passions. With the extraordinary level of artistic expertise that could be found in city, students received a high level of arts training and access to artists for free. Brown’s introduction to dance was through one such club:

 

Mrs. Lingafelter, the ballet instructor, she was a member of the Littlefield Ballet Company. When she graduated, she took gym because there were no opportunities for dancers. So she was a gym teacher, who taught dance. At school there was a ballet club, which was all white. Mrs. Lingafelter, my gym teacher, invited me to the ballet club because she thought that I should be in the ballet club. I don’t think she was thinking of color, I think she was thinking of ability…I was the only black girl there. I just was like, okay why am I here? But I felt the challenge and stayed.

 

Where dance classes throughout the city were segregated and did not allow black students, within school clubs, the color lines dissolved. While critically cognizant of the racial divides that existed beyond those walls, white and black students trained and performed together in these spaces and were friends. Brown recalls a white friend in dance club who met with her before school to help her learn terminology and dance steps. While the two did not fraternize outside of school and club, there was no racial animosity between them. They were friends who understood the limitations of that friendship.

 

Clubs are where many students started their training. After developing an affinity for the form, they often sought classes independently. Once bitten by the dance bug, Brown sought to further her training. However, no white schools would teach her. Her mother remembered a Black woman named Miss Sydney who had a school. King and classmate Marion Cuyjet had started a school and were training Negro children. The two women received their foundational training from Essie Marie Dorsey (1893-1967).

 

To understand the lineage of Brown is to look back at Dorsey’s role in training two of Philadelphia’s top dance educators at the time. Dorsey began her formal training in the 1920s, studying everything from Flamenco to classical ballet, as well as modern dance with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn at the Billy Pierce Studio. She studied ballet with Thomas Cannon and dancer-choreographer William Dollar. While she desired a career in ballet, American concert ballet was closed to African Americans at the time.

 

Dorsey opened her first studio in her home in 1926, offering classes in ballet, tap, ballroom dance, and acrobatics. As it grew, she moved to a building on Broad Street. She trained the girls not only in dance but in the ways of circumventing the limitation of their blackness. Where white teachers would not let black students take their classes, they were not averse to teaching black students separately or privately. Thomas Cannon of the Littlefield Ballet School taught at her school. (At the time, Cannon was the only white dance teacher who taught black students in Philadelphia.)

 

Dorsey instilled her students with discipline and a love of learning as well as technique, terminology, and the skills to bunk the system whenever possible. Race and color dictated levels of access and opportunities. This was illustrated by Dorsey’s prized students. Sydney King, a brown-skinned girl of Jamaican descent, was Dorsey’s “ballerina.” There were very few professional opportunities for her in Philadelphia or elsewhere. Brown recalls:

 

Sydney was the ballerina, every school has their feature. Sydney was [Essie Marie Dorsey]’s feature dancer.

 

Conversely, in 1936 Dorsey encouraged a fair-skinned green-eyed, sixteen-year-old Cuyjet to “pass” in order for her to study at the Philadelphia Ballet Academy. Later Cuyjet performed with the Littlefield Ballet Company until being unexpectedly outed by her black friends after a performance at Wanamaker’s Department Store in the Greek Auditorium.

 

 

Dorsey closed her school during World War II. When King and Cuyjet decided to join to open their own school, the Sydney-Marion School of Dance, she gave them her blessing. She even offered them her dance school location and did most of their publicity. The Sydney-Marion building was located in the African American community on Broad and South Street and offered a variety of techniques. However, ballet was the main focus. The teachers taught in the same vein of their mentor, passing on the same diversity of techniques and discipline. However, the partnership  was short-lived. Less than two years in, King and Cuyjet parted ways, each forming their own schools and splitting up the students. Brown recalls that there was a color and class divide as to which students went where:

 

I don’t know if it was about color, or if it was about the two ladies disagreeing. They did definitely split. I know that all of us little brown girls stayed with Sydney. Billy Wilson, Betsy Ann Dickerson, Barbara Harper, all of us stayed with Sydney. Those girls were a little bit lighter than me, so they stayed there with Sydney. All of them did well. All the little light skinned  doctors and lawyers and all the so-called society girls went with Miss Cuyjet except for her ballerinas [Juanita, Delores and Alice]. The three girls that were her stars came out of that school. Sydney stayed there and Cuyjet moved into Center City. She passed to rent this facility, but they got kicked out because they found out she was black. She moved around quite a bit. And Sydney stayed there, on Broad Street, for years.

 

King held her students more closely the Dorsey had held her, often not wanting them to leave even once they had outgrown her. She saw her students as family— she nurtured them and had trouble releasing them into the world. This did not stop Brown from seeking further training. When world renown choreographer Antony Tudor came to Philadelphia and was willing to teach colored students, it was a young courageous Joan Myers that took him up on it first. Brown was invited by Ginger (her white friend from Ballet Club) to her aunt’s studio in Frankfurt.

 

Ginger said, ‘Come’ and it was her aunt’s school. Of course, I wasn’t feeling welcome, but he welcomed me. He welcomed me.

 

Later Geraldine White, Billy Wilson, John Jones, Delores Browne and Judith Jamison would all eventually study with Tudor. For years Tudor taught classes and worked with dancers of color, offering them mentorship and career advice without prejudice. Tudor’s weekly classes were hosted by The Philadelphia Ballet Guild for select students. The Sunday classes were all day events where Tudor acknowledged them, gave corrections, and even asked these students to demonstrate. Brown suspects it was because he was English and not American that he had no racial barrier. When the white male dancers refused to partner Brown, he was her partner.

 

“Look at me!” I thought, “Sleeping Beauty pas de deux with Antony Tudor. Other girls were mad. I only got to be his partner because no one else would be my partner. By that time, I was in love with ballet. I was in love with Mr. Tudor. I loved ballet, the feeling of accomplishment of learning the skill, of learning the technique.

 

Because of his acceptance of the colored students, others in the class (both male and female) thawed and became accustomed to having them in class. Brown was incredulous when he asked her to perform in Les Sylphides for a performance at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. It was a dream come true. Yet, a review cited that the only thing wrong with the production was the “flies in the buttermilk.” Brown assumed the critic was referring her and Geraldine [White], whom Tudor cast as her bookend of balance.

 

Color politics have left deep scars on Brown that have shaped her life with their boundaries. Tudor was candid with Brown, and told her that if she wanted a career, she would have to move out of Philly, as the city would never tolerate a colored dancer on “main stages.” Likewise he suggested that both Billy Wilson and John Jones move into musical theater, as ballet companies in New York would not hire them. Here he was wrong, though— while Wilson perform on Broadway, however he later became a member of the Dutch National Ballet. Jones, too went on to dance professionally as a ballet dancer with Jerome Robbins Ballet USA and Harkness Ballet.

 

For Brown, leaving Philadelphia was not an option at the time. It was 1949 and she was 18. She was female and unwed and her parents were not having it. Two years later, when she received a scholarship to the Katherine Dunham School she would commuted to New York. Then as fate would have it, dancer Flo Sledge (mother of the Sledge Sisters of singing fame) who was performing in a nightclub act got pregnant. Brown was invited to step into her role in the Follies-style show at  New Town Tavern in southern New Jersey. Thus began a two-year stint -two shows, six days a week, with the show changing every 4 weeks. This show and working with with choreographer Joe Noble opened the door to a whole new world. In 1955, Brown spent two years living and performing in Montreal, Canada, with two other dancers. Together they were known as the Savar Dancers. It was Cab Calloway who brought Brown back stateside with an offer to join his show. She performed with Pearl Bailey, Sammy Davis Jr. and worked with producer Larry Steele for seven years.

 

I spent a lot of time at working and choreographing at the club parlor. I got an opportunity to work with a lot of artists. Slappy White, a lot of people came through that I had the opportunity. But I was lucky because I had an opportunity to dance with people who were doing top shelf shows… I went to Vegas three times with Pearl Bailey. I went to the Rivera Club in New York with Barry Steele. We always had good jobs. I wasn’t doing like slimy jobs. I was working at good clubs. A lot of times, I was the only black dancer.

 

It is important to understand the level of dancing that was present in these high caliber productions. It was not about booty shaking— rather, dancers were asked to employ all of their learned techniques, from tap to Dunham to ballet. Brown danced both in heels and on pointe, and fused styles together. Though she was on the road dancing in clubs, she always took class and maintained her technique. This is the beauty of black ingenuity: though there were no opportunities for Brown to be a ballet dancer, she found a way to have it in her life.

 

I never stopped dancing. When I decided that I didn’t want to travel and tour anymore, running around the country, I thought maybe if I open a school, I could teach some youngsters. The times were changing— still haven’t really changed— but the times were changing I thought if I taught some black youngsters that someone could have the opportunity I didn’t have, and that I should share what I knew. For the first six years, I had my school. I worked nights. I commuted every day between Philadelphia and Atlantic City for six years to keep my school open.

 

In 1960, Brown started her school, the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, where she has continued the legacy of her mentors. At Miss Sydney’s, it was quite normal for older students to teach the younger. Brown also worked as cashier, bookkeeper, and studio manager for King. Any job there was to do she would do it to defer the cost of her classes. Thus she had working knowledge of what it took to run a studio. Though King was not supportive of her decision to go her own way, she found Cuyjet supportive for years when she taught at the school:

 

I went to Miss Cuyjet. She opened her books to me and told me the things that I should do to have a school of my own. That was surprising because I wasn’t her student. She was the only other person I knew that had a dance school in the black community. I ask her, “What do you do?” I knew what I did at Sydney’s, but I wanted to know what she did and she showed me how she kept her books. She showed me what she did. I knew some things about production from working in show business, so I just used what I knew and what I could gather from them and kept moving.

 

In 1970, Brown started her company, Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco). A decade after its founding, it became a feeder company for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Dancers would train in the school, enter Philadanco and after cutting their teeth would move on. Brown’s love of ballet has never abated and when she sees young dancers who have the facility and talent to become professionals she unselfishly shuttles them to ballet schools, while letting them know they always have a home with her.

 

Brown knows how to make a dancer. She knows how to build family as well. The walls of her studio are covered with pictures of her glittery career, former students, company members, students, babies, and plenty of awards and citations. There are toiletries in bathrooms with notes that state: these are for convenience to be used here, stop taking them home (Aunt Joan is queen of the notes), and a kitchen.

 

Another output of her self-diagnosed  “Founder’s Disease”  was the International Association of Blacks in Dance, which Brown founded in 1991. IABD is a service organization that supports and inspires dancers of color in all stages development. Brown was tired of hearing that the abysmally low number of black ballet students was because schools “didn’t know where to find them.” She rectified the problem by spearheading the first ever ballet audition for women of color at the 2016 IABD conference in Denver, Colorado.

 

I said at IABD, we should have an audition for black girls who want to do ballet. And invite black teachers that have students to bring their students. And then let’s invite the companies that say they can’t find black dancers to this audition to see if maybe they can find someone to train, hire, teach.

 

It was a great success and began the bridge-building between the ballet and black dance community. Artistic directors from 15 ballet organizations were in attendance, of the 101 participants, over 20 were offered scholarships to summer intensives at major ballet schools. The organization  is a major step in the right direction.

 

Forty-seven years later, Brown has applied the lessons of the the two women who helped to shape her perfect balance: She is nurturing like King and a strict disciplinarian like Cuyjet; she holds her students close, but lets them fly. She has carried on the tradition of exposing students to every and any opportunity like Dorsey and she is willing to push them beyond herself like Cuyjet. And she is forever building on the family and village. . She is truly Aunt Joan.

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