{"id":15514,"date":"2022-02-18T14:55:24","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T14:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/?p=15514"},"modified":"2025-04-21T07:16:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T07:16:21","slug":"louis-johnsons-orbit-four-saints-in-three-acts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/2022\/02\/18\/louis-johnsons-orbit-four-saints-in-three-acts\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis Johnson’s Orbit: Four Saints in Three Acts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Louis Johnson and Four<\/em><\/strong> Saints in Three Acts<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n
\n

Louis Johnson; Arthur Mitchell<\/strong>, legendary New York City Ballet dancer and founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem; and Helen Taitt<\/strong>, a member of the New York Negro Ballet and founder of the School of Guyana Ballet, appeared in Four Saints in Three Acts <\/em>on opening night and most likely all 15 performances of the opera in 1952. William Dollar<\/strong> served as their choreographer. It is unknown if Mitchell and Johnson met during this production, but it most likely helped solidify a relationship that would lead to Johnson choreographing pieces for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, including one of his most notable creations Forces of Rhythm<\/em> in 1971.<\/p>\n

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

Four Saints in Three Acts, Playbill<\/a>
\nLouis Johnson, 90, Genre-Crossing Dance and Choreographer, Dies, The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

More about Four Saints in Three Acts<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"FourFour Saints in Three Acts<\/em>, a reprisal of the original 1934 production, ran from April 16 to April 1952 at the Broadway Theatre on West 53rd Street. The opera featured an all-Black cast, music by Virgil Thomson, and a libretto by Gertrude Stein and centered around Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Teresa of Avila.<\/div>\n
\n

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

Four Saints in Three Acts, Playbill<\/a>
\nFour Saints in Three Acts, Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Madeline Crawford<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louis Johnson and Four Saints in Three Acts Louis Johnson; Arthur Mitchell, legendary New York City Ballet dancer and founder of Dance […]<\/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":[288,253],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-louis-johnson-constellation-universe","category-universe"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15514","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=15514"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15516,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15514\/revisions\/15516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}