<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The annals of dance have all but passed over Bernice Harrison, despite the 10 years she spent as a standout among the 35 members of the First Negro Classic Ballet (FNCB), a pioneering early 20th<\/sup> century company here in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1951, New York\u2019s Metropolitan Opera hired a former Angeleno named Janet Collins on as a full-time dancer, making her the black person to earn that honor, and thus ensuring her a visible legacy that still resonates today. \u201cJanet Collins is often referred to as the first African-American prima ballerina,\u201d said cultural historian Kenneth Marcus. \u201cBernice Harrison beat her by six years.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n FNCB wasn\u2019t the country\u2019s first black ballet troupe \u2014 in the 1930s, a few such companies fleetingly sprang up in New York, Chicago and elsewhere \u2014 but the L.A. collective distinguishes itself as by far the era\u2019s most successful, for a decade (1946 to 1956) performing to much acclaim around the West Coast, and even internationally. Determined to claim their place in a rarefied world still conspicuous for its lack of diversity<\/a>, the collection of individuals who formed the FNCB show us something about how ordinary people grapple with the arc of history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of those human stories in my line of work that makes it more fulfilling,\u201d said Sue Hodson, curator of literary manuscripts at the Huntington Library, which houses the troupe\u2019s archive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The FNCB was founded by the choreographer Joseph Rickard in 1946, when Los Angeles had no permanent ballet company at all — a situation<\/a> in which the city has often found itself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the time, Los Angeles did have an established history of innovative modern dance, however, according to Marcus. A mini-Gold Rush of artistic talent had been spawned by the film industry. \u201cSo already in the 1920s, \u201830s and \u201840s, the city has a serious dance culture in place,\u201d Marcus said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n An experimental thread ran through this culture, and it was in this climate that one of those Hollywood choreographers \u2014 Lester Horton \u2014 created here one of the country\u2019s first multi-racial modern dance companies in 1932. (Another aspect of the climate of the day: The 1993 documentary on Horton is called Genius on the Wrong Coast<\/i>, after a 1967 article by New York Times<\/i> dance critic Clive Barnes discussed why Horton wasn\u2019t better celebrated in his lifetime.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was into this milieu that, in 1938, Rickard came west from Ann Arbor, Michigan, also intrigued by the idea of breaking into Hollywood. What he actually got was a gig at the Paramount Pictures mailroom, but that same year, Bronislava Nijinska, sister to ballet legend Valslav Nijinsky, arrived in town and set up shop as a ballet teacher. Rickard, who had never studied ballet up to that point, signed up for classes. By 1943, he mastered the art well enough for Nijinska to help him land a stint dancing professionally with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. But like so many Angelenos, what he really wanted to do was direct.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many ballet troupes of the time danced to pre-recorded accompaniment. Rickard felt he had a better idea, and when he went down to Central Avenue, famous at the time as a mecca for musicians, looking for someone who could play live for his troupe, he met Claudius Wilson, a young classically trained pianist from New Orleans. Wilson came to LA from New Orleans, a southern immigrant also lured by the promise of the movie industry but just as much looking to escape a stifling legacy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Between the 1890s and the 1960s, the U.S.\u2019s black population engaged in a Great Migration, during which six million people left the rural South for urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest and Western United States. From the 1940s on, L.A. became a major destination for many<\/a>, who were attracted by the region\u2019s booming economy and were floated largely by $11 billion in defense contracts. Southern California also had a reputation for having a relatively less racist environment than many parts of the country. Relatively \u2014 From the 1920s, restrictive housing covenants legally segregated neighborhoods in Los Angeles, until the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down in 1948. Still, in 1910, prior to the covenants, black Americans in Los Angeles enjoyed the highest rates of home ownership in the country, and by 1930 half of the state\u2019s black population called L.A. home. As a consequence, in the first half of the 20th<\/sup> century, the city enjoyed a flourishing culture akin to the artistic outpouring of the Harlem Renaissance<\/a>. \u00a0Thus, there were suddenly a good deal more potential ballet dancers on the scene. And there was also no shortage of stereotypes against those of color.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Marcus, a history professor at the University of La Verne who has published several articles on FNCB, interviewed three of the company\u2019s dancers prior to their deaths as well as various surviving members of Rickard\u2019s family. He\u2019s written of how one of the dancers, Marion Spencer, reported being informed early on that \u201cblack women were not built for ballet.\u201d Rickard himself was well aware of the prejudices\u2014he got the idea to form his company while at a Beverly Hills ballet studio on the day a black woman brought her young daughter in to inquire about lessons. She was firmly redirected to a nearby tap dance school.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n That woman was Bernice Harrison, and when Rickard tracked her down and offered to enroll her daughter in the school he had just decided to form, he soon learned that Harrison herself harbored dreams of learning to dance ballet. As someone who had also stepped up late to the bar, he discovered in himself a talent for teaching adults, and so the FNCB was born.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to Marcus, the company was regularly lauded for its creativity, its humor and its grace, as well as for its dramatic ability. Originality quickly became another of its signatures. For rather than stage one more version of Giselle<\/i> or endless The Nutcracker<\/i>s, FNCB early on began to create entirely new ballets, with strong story-lines and high production values, provided pro bono, courtesy of Rickard\u2019s Hollywood connections (for instance, Paramount Pictures\u2019 art director pulled double duty as FNCB\u2019s primary set designer). Known as a particularly gentle and easygoing man, the musician from New Orleans, Claudius Wilson, forged a working relationship with Rickard that formed the basis of the company\u2019s success. In hiring him, Rickard had unwittingly gotten a budding composer as part of the deal. Together, they developed works like Harlot House<\/i>, based on an Oscar Wilde poem; and Rasin\u2019 Cane<\/i>, a story about Southern sugar-cane farmers that integrated the romance of classical music with jazz elements, and a style that incorporated African-American themes. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a lot of precedent for black ballet composers,\u201d said Marcus. \u201cThere\u2019s no question Wilson was a path-breaker and one of the unsung heroes in LA music history.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the company\u2019s heyday between 1951 and 1954, the troupe performed frequently at high profile venues such as the Redlands Bowl, the Ramona Bowl and Santa Barbara\u2019s Lobero Theater, for audiences black, white and racially mixed\u2014sometimes as the first African-American artists known to grace those stages. They traveled to Bakersfield, to San Francisco, and the UK, financially by the skin of their teeth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe dancers brought incredible energy and commitment and skill,\u201d Hodson said. \u201cMost of them worked all day as train conductors, porters, housecleaners. They would come after work, and dance and learn techniques and choreography for the love of it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lacking significant financial backing throughout their existence, the company survived by living nearly hand-to-mouth. Rickard himself not only at times drove an ice-cream truck to make the rent, but also economized by living in the ballroom. Harrison, the company\u2019s prima ballerina, sometimes had to tow her children along to rehearsal in lieu of paying a babysitter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tucked away inside the Huntington\u2019s vaults sits a copy of one of Wilson\u2019s scores, bound in corrugated cardboard and held together by tape. \u201cThat one got to me,\u201d Hodson said. \u201cThey had no resources, and they danced to critical acclaim.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n One particularly high point came with a 1950 performance at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium. \u201cOne cannot overemphasize that 1950 concert,\u201d Marcus said. Twenty-five hundred people packed the house. Igor Stravinsky, Paul Henried and the conductor Bruno Walter all attended. Famed screenwriter Ben Hecht, also on hand that night, wrote Rickard a glowing (albeit a bit dated) letter after the performance, which the troupe parlayed into promo material. \u201cThat recognition puts them on the cultural map,\u201d Marcus said.<\/p>\n![\"First](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/First-Negro-Classic-Ballet-in-beach.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>