NEW YORK, NY.- The realization hit her during a performance.

Virginia Johnson, the artistic director of Dance Theater of Harlem, was watching the company in the fall of 2019 when she knew it was time to step down.

“I was like, Wait — there’s a company up there,” she said in an interview in her Dance Theater office. “There they are. That’s it.”

This mission accomplished moment came after close to a decade of work. When she took over the artistic reins of Dance Theater in 2010, Arthur Mitchell, one of its founders and for many years her boss, told her, “Your job is to revive the company,” she said.

Watching the dancers in the company she had rebuilt, she was impressed by their technique, by the way they had melded into a group. “I said, OK, well here they are.”

But she knew they were ready for the next step. “They needed more push,” she said. “I’m a nurturer. I wanted to make sure that I was trying to help them dance out of a sense of joy, a sense of positive growth — that I didn’t want to make them grow out of a sense of fear.”

She realized they needed that push — and a new vision. “They need somebody to challenge them in new ways,” she said, “to make them better, to make them stronger, to take them to the next level, and I’m not the right one to do that. I did my part.”

And while she didn’t do it alone, Johnson played an important role in reviving the organization’s gem, its storied professional company, which had been forced to go on hiatus for several years because of financial difficulties. (Along with the company, Dance Theater has a school and community programs, including Dancing Through Barriers, which provides ballet education to students, mainly in public schools.)

Lorraine Graves, a former principal, said the company was “kind of lost” and credits Johnson with helping to put “Dance Theater of Harlem back on the map.” She was successful in “really holding on through adversity and challenging times,” Graves said, “and trying to give dancers a home continuously after such a long hiatus.”

And then, Graves added, “to also survive the pandemic? To be able to hold on through that was actually quite a feat.”

Johnson, 73, will preside over the company’s final New York City Center season, Wednesday through Sunday. Robert Garland, the company’s longtime resident choreographer and director of its school, will take over July 1.

Garland is an essential part of Dance Theater, dating back to his time as a principal. Not only did he dance and choreograph under the mentorship of Mitchell — who formed Dance Theater with Karel Shook in 1969 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. — but his musical braiding of classical ballet with Black vernacular dance is unparalleled in its skill and soul.

Johnson is more than pleased. “Robert worked with Arthur Mitchell,” she said. “It’s like how many artistic directors are changing places this year? Everybody is doing a search. But this is coming from inside.”

As Johnson added: “You do have to evolve. And Robert is just the perfect person for this.”




She recognizes that there is anxiety, too, but sees that as natural — and good. And she is firm on one point: She doesn’t consider herself an artistic director, though that was her title. “I don’t have that kind of vision, I don’t have that kind of skill,” she said. “I’ve had an amazing experience here. But now it’s time for me to do something different.”

As a founding member of the company and one of its star ballerinas, Johnson danced with Dance Theater for 28 years before retiring at 47. “How could I have lasted that long?” she said.

When she retired she wanted to be a normal person, with a normal life. She went on to become the editor-in-chief of Pointe magazine before returning to Dance Theater at Mitchell’s request. “How could I say no?” she said. “This is the person who gave me everything I dreamed of in my life. It was time for me to pay back.”

She is firm about something else, too: She didn’t trade her freedom for ballet. “I’m always angry about people who write about or talk about all of the sacrifices,” she said. “OK, so there was some pain. OK, so there were a few things I gave up. Look what I got. I got to have a life in ballet.”

She started dancing at age 3, going on to train at the Washington School of Ballet under Mary Day. It was Day, a white woman, who eventually told her that ballet wasn’t going to fit into her future. Johnson said her words were: “There are no Black ballerinas. Nobody’s going to hire you.’

“Look, I was in her school for six years,” Johnson continued. “She trained me. She gave me opportunities. I had principal roles in her ballets. But she was telling me what the world was. And that was good.”

That was before Mitchell, the first Black principal at City Ballet, started Dance Theater and cultivated dozens of Black ballerinas like Johnson and Graves, along with Lydia Abarca-Mitchell, Stephanie Dabney and many more. The company made Johnson’s career in ballet possible; and, even now, she said, she knows the world needs Dance Theater.

“People still do think about ballet as this art form that came from the 19th century — so beautiful and so precious in that 19th century way,” she said. “They don’t realize that it is a living art form that needs to be true to the time that it lives in. And so especially now, people need to see that this art form of ballet belongs to everybody. You have to have a lot to be able to succeed in it. But if you’re given the opportunity to develop that lot, then the art form itself will be better.”

Dance Theater of Harlem continues to play a role in providing those opportunities — and more. “Special place,” she said. “Special idea. We have never been a Black ballet company. We have always been about being a company that is representative of humanity.

“Certainly, every one of us in that first company has been told, ‘You don’t belong in ballet.’ So it was a place for us to be. And now there are more places for us to be, but the vision of ballet being an art form that’s about humanity rather than about one culture — people still don’t get that.”

While Johnson’s future plans aren’t concrete, she said she would like to go back to being an artist. She isn’t sure what that means exactly but knows it will involve writing. Just don’t expect her life story, though she kept journals throughout her illustrious career. “There will be no memoirs,” she said. “Gosh. Life is for living!”

So what will she write? “I have two novels going,” she said. “But they’re going, not going — in process. It’s a really weird thing: You have an idea, and you start, but you don’t end up where you think you’re going to end up. I’m a big reader, and I have so many people that I love their writings. I’m going to try to do this? To understand how to put a character together and how to make that moment when something clicks? I’d love to be able to do that.”

One thing she won’t do: Be connected with the company. “I’m going to do an Arthur Mitchell,” she said, referring to how he stayed out of the picture during her tenure. “I think it’s the best way. It’s confusing when you have too many heads in the room.”

The future of Dance Theater looks solid, but the company represents more than these dancers. When Johnson’s teacher told her there would be no place for her in ballet, Johnson wasn’t deterred. She is, however, surprised when she tells that story and people are shocked; it means that they aren’t observant. “Look at this country, and you’re shocked that somebody would say that?” she said. “This country is very good at being oblivious about its shortcomings. It did not pause my desire.”

And she didn’t run out of the room crying. “It was more like, I’m doing this,” she said. “This is what I love. And that’s why I loved Dance Theater of Harlem. Not because it gave me the chance to be a ballerina, but because it gave me the chance to say, in the United States of America, this is who I am, and I am doing this.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.