Sandra Fortune Green and the Capitol Ballet Company
Sandra Fortune-Green is one of the most renowned alumni of the Capitol Ballet Company. After enrolling in the Jones-Haywood School of Dance, Fortune-Green eventually became a principal dancer for the Capitol Ballet Company.
On 31 May 1968, the company performed in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Cramton Auditorium, Howard University. The program featured a premiere of “Four Negro Spirituals,” choreographed by Doris Jones. (The four songs were “You Better Mind,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Walk Together Children,” “It’s Me, It’s Me, It’s Me, Oh Lord.”) Other featured dances were “Collaboration,” and “Pocahontas,” in which Fortune played lead.
Sources:
6 september 1968 & capitol ballet company, Marya Annette McQuirter, dc1968 project
Sandra Fortune Green, MoBBallet.org
Capitol Ballet Guild, Incorporated, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
More about Sandra Fortune-Green
Prima ballerina Sandra Fortune-Green was born on March 2, 1951 in Washington DC to Elizabeth and Raymond Fortune. Fortune-Green began her dance career at age ten, enrolling in the renowned Jones-Haywood School of Dance under the instruction of Doris Jones and Claire Haywood. Fortune-Green flourished at the school, eventually becoming a principal dancer for the Capitol Ballet Company.
After Fortune-Green graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1968, she pursued her dance studies in New York at the School of American Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, and the Joffrey Ballet before returning back to Washington DC to attend Howard University. In 1972, Fortune-Green left Howard to begin training for the prestigious Second International Ballet Competition in Moscow, Russia. She was the only African American to ever compete in this competition. Fortune-Green was eliminated after the second round of judging, but finished twenty-sixth out of the 126 dancers participating. After returning to the United States, Fortune-Green married her high school sweetheart, Joseph Green, on New Year’s Eve of 1975.
In 1987, Fortune-Green earned a Washington DC Mayor’s Arts Award presented by Marion Barry, and in 1994, she was invited to join the faculty at Howard University’s dance department, where she taught ballet technique classes. Fortune Green is also on the dance faculty at the Duke Ellington School of Arts, a position she has held for more than thirty years. In 2007, Fortune-Green became the new owner of the Jones-Haywood School of Dance, the same studio she attended throughout her adolescence and early adulthood. Years earlier, Jones and Haywood stated in a 1974 interview that they hoped Fortune-Green would continue their legacy.
Fortune-Green has been widely recognized for her efforts within the performing arts, including a designation as an outstanding alumnus from Howard University. Fortune-Green was also featured in two major publications—Black Dance from 1619 to Today by Lynne Fauley Emery and The Black Tradition in Dance by Richard Long.
Sources:
Sandra Fortune-Green, The History Makers
Alisha Naidu
