When Gayle McKinney-Griffith was an aspiring ballerina auditioning for Juilliard in the late 1960s, her excitement was tempered by a terrifying realization.
“When you walk into a room and you’re the only Black person there,” he later said, “you immediately develop this persona that’s protective but also powerful. You’re used to thinking two things at once: “Yeah, I’m the only black person here” and “Yeah, let’s do this.”
This attitude not only helped her get into this elite art institution. it also led her to a nine-year career as its founding member Dance Theater of Harlemthe pioneering New York troupe that offered long overdue opportunities and international recognition to black ballet artists.
As was the case with many of the company’s dancers in the early years, Ms. McKinney-Griffith’s achievements faded over time, and her death on Oct. 11 was not widely reported. She died of cancer at 74 at her home in Quaker Hill, Conn., said her daughter, Khadija T. Griffith.
Ms. McKinney-Griffith’s stay at Juilliard proved short. He left school in 1968 to join Arthur Mitchell, the first African-American principal dancer at the New York City Ballet and a global star, to join the bold new troupe he was starting with his former teacher, ballet dancer Karel Sock.
Ms. McKinney-Griffith served not only as a principal dancer at the Dance Theater of Harlem but also as the company’s first mistress of ballet. In that position, now known as rehearsal director, she was Mr. Mitchell’s top lieutenant, responsible for rehearsals, directing dancers in choreography, assisting with casting and other tasks.
Her training at Juilliard proved invaluable.
“In those early days, Arthur Mitchell really needed well-trained dancers,” Virginia Johnson, a founding member of the company, said in an interview. “And there was this dancer. He had the technique and the line to walk into George Balanchine’s ‘Concerto Barocco’ without a doubt.”
Ms Johnson added: ‘Her dancing had a transcendent quality. It was musical and meticulous as classical ballet demands.”
Ms. McKinney-Griffith has toured the country and the world and performed for countless luminaries, including Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
But her legacy won’t last — a point made clear in Karen Valby’s book The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History, released last month.
“The Swans of Harlem” chronicles the triumphs of Ms. McKinney-Griffith and her Dance Theater of Harlem colleagues Lydia Abarca-Mitchell, Sheila Rohan, Karlya Shelton-Benjamin and Marcia Sells. It also recounts their frustrations, including being “robbed of the laurels they could now rest on,” as Daniel Smith wrote in a recent review in The New York Times, by consigning themselves to relative obscurity after their years on the scene. .
As Ms. Johnson said, “We were like celebrities, but when the company closed, it was like the Dance Theater of Harlem ceased to exist, even in history.” (Dance Theater of Harlem went on hiatus in 2004 due to financial challenges and reopened in 2012.)
In 2015, when Misty Copeland became the first Black principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, the media often portrayed her as if she were the first black star ballerina, Ms. Johnson said. “People took it to heart, as if Lydia Abarca didn’t exist, or Gail McKinney. as if all the people who danced with us and Mitchell for 20 or 30 years didn’t exist.”
Gayle Dunkin McKinney was born on August 26, 1949, in Harlem, the daughter of Harold McKinney, a designer, and Millicent (Herndon) McKinney, a telephone operator.
When Gayle was 5 years old, she and the family moved to a colonial house on several acres in Quaker Hill, in eastern Connecticut north of New London, when her father took a job at the submarine manufacturer Electric Boat.
She began taking ballet lessons at Carnegie Hall when she was 3, and by about 10 she was performing the “Four Swans” variation on “Swan Lake,” according to Ms. Valby.
She continued her training at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in New London. She was accepted to Juilliard after graduating from nearby Waterford High School in 1967.
Despite the prestige of admission to the Manhattan school, all was not easy there. As Ms. Valby wrote, Juilliard initially steered Ms. McKinney-Griffith toward the modern dance program, even though she had an extensive ballet resume. School officials told her in private, she said, that they believed it was the best direction for her, since she would never find a place on a professional ballet team because of her race.
Distraught, she began to question why she was even going to school. It was no wonder that when he heard that Mr. Mitchell was starting a company, he was excited to have the opportunity to join.
She auditioned and, after showing off her pirouettes to Mr. Mitchell, he handed her a note that read: “Go learn this dance. Tomorrow we rehearse the first movement of “Tones”. (“Tones” was a new company ballet.)
Ms. McKinney-Griffith remained with the Dance Theater of Harlem until 1977, when she was hired by the choreographer Louis Johnson to direct the dancers – including Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell and Michael Jackson – for the elaborately choreographed numbers in the 1978 film Sidney Lumet. the Broadway hit “The Wiz,” an exuberant Black retelling of “The Wizard of Oz.”
“As if you had to teach Michael anything,” she is quoted as saying in Ms Valby’s book. “He knew those steps yesterday! I felt so silly doing those little ‘Ease on down, ease on down’ movements. How embarrassing!”
In 1979, he accepted an invitation to appear in a production of the musical Show Boat in Berlin. He remained in Berlin for the better part of three decades, teaching dance in many German cities as well as in Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In the 1990s, he joined the faculty of Indiana University in South Bend. She taught there for three years and helped create a dance department.
In addition to her daughter, Mrs. McKinney-Griffith is survived by a son, Don Griffith II, and a grandson.
He continued to choreograph and dance into the 1990s and never lost the thrill of opening moments in front of an audience. As she recalled in an interview with Ms. Valby, before each performance she would knock on the stage three times for luck.
“It’s like there’s an energy curtain,” he said. “And then you get over it. It’s so powerful, because then you escape your anxiety. No more training. No more pressure. Show your gift.”