{"id":12083,"date":"2021-06-21T18:27:34","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T18:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/?p=12083"},"modified":"2025-04-21T07:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T07:16:23","slug":"jerry-douglas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/21\/jerry-douglas\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Douglas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jerry Douglas<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Royal Ballet (1997-2000)<\/strong>
\nAmerican Ballet Theatre<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Photo via London\u2019s Evening Standard<\/em>, 2000.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Born ca. 1980, Jerry Douglas grew up in Sacramento, California and started dancing jazz in the forth grade. For four years, he took hip-hop classes at Step One\u2019s Sacramento Dance Academy before focusing on ballet at Pamela Hayes Classical Ballet Training. Douglas and his mother fortuitously drove Dance Theatre of Harlem\u2019s Arthur Mitchell<\/a> to the Sacramento airport when Mitchell offered the young Douglas a scholarship sight unseen. While Douglas could not attend DTH\u2019s intensive that summer, he was able to the following year, 1993.<\/p>\n

While a student at Sacramento High, Douglas juggled his classical ballet training with dancing for the high school\u2019s company Jazz and Pizzaz.<\/p>\n

After studying at the Royal Ballet School, Douglas was offered positions both at American Ballet Theatre and The Royal Ballet. At 17 years old, he joined the latter in 1997, becoming the first African American to officially join the company and making his debut in Romeo and Juliet<\/em>. (Previously, Dance Theatre of Harlem dancers performed as guest artists<\/a>. Douglas was incorrectly named The Royal\u2019s first \u201cblack dancer\u201d by the Evening Standard<\/em>, but Johaar Mosaval<\/a> performed with the company for more than a decade.)<\/p>\n

Douglas became a \u201cpopular member of the troupe\u201d but wanted to perform more classical roles, eventually leaving to join American Ballet Theatre in 2000 (Evening Standard<\/em>). His repertoire with ABT included Stanton Welch\u2019s Clear<\/em> and Paul Taylor\u2019s Black Tuesday<\/em> (original cast, 2001).<\/p>\n

Douglas now runs a dance school, Douglas Dance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jerry Douglas in a 1998 promotion for a performance in his hometown of Sacramento. Photo via The Sacramento Bee<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Photo via the Evening Standard<\/em>, 1997.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Royal Ballet names first black dancer, Evening Standard<\/a>
\nFinding Clarity in the Motion of Bach, Newsday<\/a>
\nBallet loss, Evening Standard<\/a>
\nLeaping Into the Future, The Sacramento Bee<\/a>
\nSwell Gala: Brother, Can You Space a Grand?, Newsday<\/a>
\nDance: Home-town Hero, The Sacramento Bee<\/a><\/p>\n

Social media:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook Douglas Dance<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Douglas The Royal Ballet (1997-2000) American Ballet Theatre Born ca. 1980, Jerry Douglas grew up in Sacramento, California and started dancing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dancers"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12083"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12089,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12083\/revisions\/12089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}