Capitol Ballet Company and LaVerne Reed

LaVerne Reed–dancer, choreographer, teacher–had an interest in creating dance theater pieces instead of “dance for dance’s sake.” She has originally choreographed the piece “We the People,” for the Capitol Ballet. Although Reed has never been a prima, she has performed for several notable companies, such as the Capitol Ballet, the D. C. Black Repertory Company, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Company, the Joyce Trisler Dance Company and the Louis Johnson Dance Theatre.

More about LaVerne Reed

While Reed was dancing for the Capitol Ballet Company, she performed in several productions. For example, during the production “Piloting Capitol Ballet Clipper, Flight #4 8 74 ‘Around the World,’” displayed in 1974, Reed performed in “Songrant Day at the Thai Buddhist Temples” (in “Paya Lebar Airport, Singapore, Asia”), ”Bon Marche, The Left Bank” (in “VII. Orly Airport, Paris, France”), and in “Natives” (in “XIII. Duvalier Airport, Port-au-Prince, Haiti”). At the company’s performance–Capitol Ballet Company in Concert–at Howard University, on November 21, 1973, Reed performed in “Asha I” together with Maria Newby, Hinton Battle, Rodney Green, Leroy Cowan, and other notable members of the company. 

Reed retired from being a dance performer upon the birth of her child Erica, but continued to teach because teaching and choreographing are what Reed found most important at that point in life. She often talked about the joy of creativity–a joy that pulses through all the arts whether expressed on the stage of a Cramton auditorium, a basement dance studio at Howard or anyplace else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

LaVerne Reed And Her Dancers, New Directions
Capitol Ballet Guild, Incorporated, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

 

Iulia Stanciu