Dance Theatre of Harlem is intimately intertwined with Robert Garland’s career. He joined the company in 1985 after graduating from Juilliard, eventually becoming a principal dancer in 1991. Later, he directed the Dance Theatre of Harlem School and became the company’s first resident choreographer. In 2022, he was appointed DTH’s artistic director, succeeding ballet pioneer Virginia Johnson in July 2023.
This year, DTH returns to New York City Center April 10–13 with the world premieres of Garland’s The Cookout and Jodie Gates’ Passage of Being. Also on the bill are two company premieres—William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and George Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations—as well as Return, Garland’s crowd-favorite ballet set to music by James Brown and Aretha Franklin.
Pointe spoke with Garland about his career, his experiences directing DTH so far, and the company’s upcoming NYCC season.
You’ve been a dancer, teacher, school director, and choreographer. How have those experiences informed your role directing DTH?
When Arthur Mitchell made me resident choreographer, that was the part that I gravitated to. But it was in the school where I learned the craft of arts administration and how to deal with people from age 3 to 23. Now that I sit in the artistic director’s seat, all that experience informs it.
I’ve been here so long that I didn’t have a lot of serious challenges. I felt that it was kind of a seamless transition. I had been here when Virginia had been tasked with bringing the professional company back [which occurred in 2013, after it went on hiatus 2004–12], so my work continued in that vein. The joy that I have now is mostly based on the fact that I love my dancers. They are not only incredible dancers but incredible human beings. And I’ve learned that that is actually more important than dancing sometimes. I have found great joy and understanding my artists in that way.
How has DTH’s legacy informed your own vision for the company?
As a 10-year-old in Philadelphia, I experienced Dance Theatre of Harlem much in the same way that [today’s children] are experiencing it now. At that time, [I saw] a ballet [Forces of Rhythm] by a man named Louis Johnson. Then there was this great classical work, Le Corsaire, that was danced by a beautiful Black ballerina, Yvonne Hall, and her partner, Ronald Perry. Then they also did something that was a little funky and contemporary. What I got from that was that Dance Theatre of Harlem met me where I was, and then took me to another place.
For this season, we have something that speaks to the African American tradition: my ballet The Cookout. Then we have Donizetti Variations, which comes out of the Balanchine ballet tradition. And then there is The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude by my new friend forever, Mr. Bill Forsythe. And you know, the biggest joy of this moment is that Jodie Gates, who choreographed Passage of Being [and staged Vertiginous on DTH], invited Francesca Harper (one of the original Vertiginous cast members, who is now director of Ailey second company) to come and coach our dancers.
Can you speak more about your new work, The Cookout?
The Cookout was inspired by Arthur Mitchell. He always referred to the dignity of his people, meaning the African American culture at large and, locally, Harlem. He was a child of the very end of the Harlem Renaissance. There were three dignities that I meditated upon: dignity of work, culture, and sorrow, which culminates in joy at large—and Black joy, specifically.
For dignity of work, I’m using a piece of music by who I call my “Philadelphia home girl,” Jill Scott, called A Long Walk. As a child in the ’70s, I had the first realization that there was something called a diaspora. There was a song [“Bra”] I knew by a British rhythm-and-blues band called Cymande. About a year ago, I remembered that while I was at a panel at The Royal Ballet in England. “Bra” is the dignity of culture. Then, I’m using a song by another English woman out of our diaspora, Caron Wheeler, called “Somewhere,” that is the dignity of sorrow. For the last movement, we end up at a Brooklyn barbecue with the band Brass Construction, which is from Brooklyn, and that is #joy.
Why did you believe this is the right moment to premiere more Forsythe and Balanchine pieces?
The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude is, first of all, set to a classical piece of music. Oftentimes, Mr. Forsythe uses contemporary composers, and the Schubert music for Vertiginous was appealing to me. And I felt the African American dynamic—the last movement has an attack that matches the DTH aesthetic. It’s also, technically speaking, fiendishly hard, so it’s also developing my dancers.
The only board that Mr. Balanchine sat on was Dance Theatre of Harlem’s. When [Arthur Mitchell] started the company in 1969, the board was [Brock Peters], Cicely Tyson, George Balanchine, and Lincoln Kirstein. They are on our incorporation papers. I choreographed for New York City Ballet in the year 2000 and I worked with Kyra Nichols, who was dancing at the time. She’s now a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, and I have four female dancers from that program [in the company]. So I called Kyra, and she set Donizetti Variations.
If you could have a conversation with Arthur Mitchell today, what do you think he would say about the state of Black people in ballet now compared to in his day?
We’ve been supported by people that have been in our corner 100 percent for years, but the level of support that we receive as compared to predominantly white ballet institutions—we are under-resourced in comparison. So I think that part would trouble him the most. We’ve managed over the years to sustain high artistic standards, so moving forward, we are looking for major support to continue the work of building up not only a community but also people. We are tied to a community, and that community is Harlem.
And ballet training is not cheap. He would still be unhappy with the fact that there are children who probably want to study ballet but cannot because they don’t have the resources. And when I say “resources,” that’s time and money on the part of the parents and the families, and money on the study itself.