Carmen De Lavallade, famed African American dancer, actress and choreographer was born in Los Angeles in 1931 to a Creole family from New Orleans that included Janet Collins, De Lavallade’s cousin, and the first Black Prima Ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Destined for dance herself, Carmen began studying ballet at 16. By 1954 she had reached New York and was dancing with the Alvin Ailey Company following a stint as the lead dancer for the Lester Horton Dance Theater in Los Angeles beginning in 1949. Also in 1954, she made her broadway debut alongside Alvin Ailey and Pearl Bailey in House of Flowers, a musical written by Truman Capote. Her substantial broadway career would be augmented by several film and television appearances including Duke Ellington’s A Drum is a Woman in 1957 and Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones with Pearl Bailey and Dorothy Dandridge in 1954. In the years that followed she traveled the world, frequently with her husband and longtime collaborator Geoffrey Holder, dancing, acting and teaching. In 1970, De Lavallade joined the Yale School of Drama as a performer-in-residence and choreographer, and later became a professor of the Yale Repertory Theater, which at the time counted Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep among its students. The recipient of many awards over her long and illustrious career, Carmen De Lavallade was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2017. This photo, taken at the start of her career in 1955 by noted American photographer Carl Van Vechten is reproduced here in an archival museum quality print. Presented on 100% acid free, 5.57 oz, smooth matte fine art paper, this piece is sustainably printed to order in the UK, making it the perfect choice for a beautiful statement in any room.
