Jamie Bower

Ballets de Paris

Photo via Jet Magazine, July 1955.
Jamie Bower, a Brooklyn native, was a member of Ballets de Paris, a company founded by Roland Petit in 1948. As a member of the company, Bower appeared in the 1953 film The Glass Slipper, starring Leslie Caron (Palmer 182).
In 1955, Jet Magazine stated that after dancing with Ballets de Paris, Bower became “a modern danseuse.”

Karel Shook, in his Elements of Classical Ballet Technique as Practiced in the School of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, describes Bower as a dancer “who did not perform as [a] ballet [dancer] per se, but who had classical technique and the elegance and carriage that go with it,” though she did perform professionally with a ballet company.

Sources:

Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit, Britannica
The Future for Negroes in Ballet, Jet Magazine July 14, 1955
Shook, Karel. Elements of Classical Ballet Technique: As Practiced in the School of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Dance Books, 1978.
Palmer, Colin A. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: the Black Experience in the Americas. 2nd ed., Macmillan Reference USA, 2006.

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