{"id":11769,"date":"2021-08-25T00:30:19","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T00:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/?p=11769"},"modified":"2025-04-21T07:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T07:16:23","slug":"about-this-orbit-marion-cuyjet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/2021\/08\/25\/about-this-orbit-marion-cuyjet\/","title":{"rendered":"About This Orbit: Marion Cuyjet"},"content":{"rendered":"

About This Orbit: Marion Cuyjet<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Return to the Marion Cuyjet Orbit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Marion Cuyjet, photo via a recital program, 1951<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marion Cuyjet, born July 29, 1920, came from a community called the Delaware Moors, a people of African American, Native American and Welsh heritage, and looked white although her family chose not to pass.<\/p>\n

Though Sydney King, her former classmate, was technically a better dancer, because of Cuyjet\u2019s complexion, it was she who had the opportunity to perform professionally. This was a benefit of being lighter skinned\u2014they were granted entry into areas of white society that the browner Negroes were not, including working at department stores where they were not even allowed to shop. Cuyjet, however, had no interest in passing as a long-term solution and was very clear about her limitations as a dancer. Her daughter Judy says:<\/p>\n

My mother was not a great dancer. She was a student of dance who could demonstrate some things. She was a mental dancer; she could straighten your ass out.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the early \u201840s, Cuyjet married and started a family. In 1944, she began to expand her training by taking up folk dance and started a small school in her home a year later.<\/p>\n

King and Cuyjet decided to form the Sydney-Marion School of Dance in 1946<\/a>, using the space offered to them by Dorsey. When the pair fell out, Cuyjet opened the Judimar School of Dance in 1948<\/p>\n